A helicopter hovers on June 3, 2012 over the scene of the crash of a Dana Airline plane that plunged onto a plot containing a church, a two-storey residential building and a printing shop in Lagos. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL AREWA

DALLAS (1080 KRLD) – An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board will be heading to Nigeria to help piece together the cause of a jet crash that claimed the life of a former University of North Texas student.

Josephine Onita, 23, and her sister were on board the Dana Air flight that crashed into an apartment building in Lagos, Nigera on Sunday. The accident claimed the lives of all 153 passengers on board.

NTSB spokesman Nicholas Worrell says their investigators will be able to bring additional experience to a country that doesn’t have as many plane crashes.

“All of them are trained in the field of aviation accident investigation,” Worrell said. “What they’re doing is they’re investigating an accident –– they’re going to follow the similarities of how they investigation accident in the U.S.”

The Associated Press reported the two sisters were attending a wedding in the African nation. The two women were from Missouri City, located about 25 miles southeast of Houston. Josephine Onita was managing a financial planning business that her father started.

Worrell said the Nigerian government has jurisdiction of the investigation, but asked for the NTSB’s help in figuring out what went wrong.

“This has happened in several other accidents and, in most cases, if it’s a foreign accident, the government would request our assistance and we would get it approved and send an investigator or however many investigators we need to send,” Worrell said.

Before the crash, the plane reported an engine malfunction. The official cause of the crash is pending the investigation, however.