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Permission will soon be received for the aircraft to leave Nigeria A Ukrainian An-12 aircraft recently arrested in Nigeria with a military cargo on board will soon be allowed to leave the country, National Security and Defense Council First Deputy Secretary Stepan Havrysh has said.

"Permission will soon be received for the aircraft to leave Nigeria," he said at a press conference after a council meeting in Kyiv on Friday.

Havrysh also said that the plane was in Nigeria as of 1500 Kyiv time, and added that the Nigerian side had no claims against Ukraine or the transporting agent.

Foreign media reported earlier that a Ukrainian cargo aircraft, said to be a Fokker with registration number UR-CAK, en route from Ukraine to Equatorial Guinea, was arrested on arrival at Aminu Kano International Airport in the Nigerian city of Kano after making an emergency landing due to a technical fault. Eighteen crates of arms were found aboard the aircraft when it was searched.

According to other reports, the arrested aircraft belongs to Ukraine's Meridian Air Company, which is based in Poltava region.

Ukrainian media reported that the aircraft had been carrying 60-mm and 82-mm mortar shells under a contract signed between Cyprus-registered Infora Limited and the Defense Ministry of Equatorial Guinea. The aircraft departed from the Croatian capital, Zagreb, bound for the capital of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, reports said.

Ukraine's state-run arms export company Ukrspetsexport also said that it had nothing to do with the military cargo arrested by Nigeria.

The aircraft was arrested due to the violation of procedures for declaring the cargo of the plane when it was refueled in Nigeria.