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Nigeria: The High Cost Of Neglect
By
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Since the 2001 bomb blasts at the Ikeja
Military Cantonment, in Lagos here, which led to the loss of
many precious Nigerian lives, I have learnt to view with
seriousness any “Breaking News” signal on television. On
that Sunday evening, as the chilling sounds of explosions
continued to ring out like distant thunders of a dying rain, I
impulsively switched on the TV set, and when I saw “Breaking
News” on the screen, I sat still and waited until Governor
Bola Tinubu of Lagos State (bless him) appeared with one army
man, and told us, with a very soothing voice, what exactly was
happening in Lagos.
So, when about midnight penultimate Saturday
(October 22, 2005), I woke up suddenly in my study where I had
fallen asleep, and the TV set which was still on beamed again
the phrase: “Breaking News”, I immediately became alert.
Then, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) came up with the
sad, devastating news that an Abuja-bound aircraft belonging to
Bellview Airlines which had taken off in Lagos by 8.45pm was
missing, having lost contact with the control tower three
minutes after take-off. I could hardly sleep after this. I was
so apprehensive, confused, and too afraid to guess what may have
happened. I waited in vain to be given any further information
about the aircraft, but it was still the same tension-inducing
news about the missing aircraft that they kept repeating, until
daybreak. I could imagine the trauma and pain of those whose
loved ones had boarded that aircraft as they also waited and
longed in vain for more information about the plane and its
hapless occupants.
Typical of Nigeria and its failed systems, it
took nearly 18 hours before the crash site could be located
in Lisa, Ogun State, Obasanjo's home state, after initial
misleading reports that the plane had crashed in Kishi, a
community in the border of Oyo and Kwara States. The African
Independent Television (AIT) reportorial crew which discovered
the site was punished for daring to succeed where the relevant
authorities had failed woefully. The Nigerian Broadcasting
Commission (NBC) had closed down the station for nearly
twenty-four hours, before the intervention of federal
authorities in Abuja.
Now, if you are angry because of this
scandalous less-than snail-speed response to such a monumental
disaster, your anger, I dare say, is coming rather too late.
What happened with this recent tragedy has, most painfully,
remained a routine in Obasanjo's Nigeria, and may even continue
to be so, or worsen, for the simple reason that we have found
ourselves trapped in this ungoverned and uncoordinated jungle
called Nigeria.
When recently a Chanchangi Airlines plane
overshot the runway and entered into a ditch at the Murtala
Mohammed Airport, Lagos, it took more than twenty-four hours for
the plane to be pulled out. Julius Berger, a construction
company, was reluctant to do the job for our aviation
authorities, because, the ones it previously did for them were
unpaid for. Now, you ask me: why would a whole nation, an
oil-rich one for that matter, the so-called giant of Africa, put
all its hope in a private company called Julius Berger? Why is
Nigeria incapable of purchasing the requisite equipment for
attending to such emergencies? Why is this country perennially
helpless in virtually everything? Is there any person at all
somewhere planning and directing the usually bungled affairs of
this failed state?
Again, when the Charlie 130 aircraft crashed
in Ejigbo several years ago, during the equally calamitous reign
of the self-confessed "evil genius" of
Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida, it took more than
twenty-four hours for rescue operations to commence. Some
officers were wounded and bleeding, but no help came their way,
until it was too late.
The implication of this state of affairs is
that if the Bellview Airlines Flight 210 had flung out some
wounded survivors the time it crashed in Lisa that Saturday
night, those hapless persons would most certainly have all bled
to death before anyone could attempt any form of rescue.
And as I write now, judging by the utterances and actions of our
officials in these past few days, there is no guarantee that
Nigeria would still be equipped to respond to the least of
emergencies tomorrow. What this means is that this country is
nothing short of an abandoned project, left to rot away by those
who purport to rule it; a nation where anything can happen to
anyone any day without anyone doing something about it. Indeed,
each time tragedies of this nature occur, one gets the most
painful reminder that we are merely paying the inevitable, high
cost of abysmal neglect. This neglect shows itself in several
other sectors, and Nigeria will continue to pay dearly for it
until we get our acts together.
I watched with immense interest the special
sitting of the House of Representatives on this air disaster and
was amazed at the hysteria and passion that marked their
deliberations. Indeed, the plane crash appears to have sent a
strong signal to the once indolent, docile and idle lawmakers
that they can no longer afford to tuck themselves inside their
thick blanket of indifference while the nation died gradually.
Indeed, everyone is now sniffing danger and death in the air,
and so, legislative proceedings have suddenly ceased to be mere
perfunctory rituals. They are now asking deep, searching
questions, and I hope they would go ahead and insist on getting
the right answers. It must be clear to them that they cannot
afford to look away from the insincerity of purpose that fires
virtually every action of the corrupt, soulless regime in Abuja,
and expect that the unpatriotic culture they are selling would
not rub off on every other section of the society! That is why
perfunctorily supervised airline operators would cut corners to
make huge profits and endanger the lives of innocent citizens.
I hope the lawmakers would all wake up and
demand that the right things be done NOW, or else, as we have
seen penultimate Saturday, anybody can be caught in the
disasters that these criminal neglects usher in. Unless Pius
Anyim’s ill-fated proposal to purchase a number of jets for
the National Assembly would be revisited and implemented, there
is no guarantee that disasters would respect even Honourable
Members. Of course, the Executive can afford to be indifferent
for the very obvious reason that the president and, perhaps,
members of his family, do not patronize commercial flights, even
though Tony Blair and the Queen of England still fly British
Airways!
I once did a piece captioned: “A Nation,
Not Governed! ”, and some people may have thought I was
raising unjustified alarm. I have to restate it that the best
example of an abandoned project I know of is Nigeria. Forget the
inane claims that unceasingly ooze out from Abuja. The only real
activity going on in government circles in Nigeria today is the
cruel looting of the nation’s treasury and systematic
destruction of its once organized systems. That is why the decay
and rot continue unchecked. Those who rule Nigeria have since
lost hope on its possible survival. And so, they are now merely
stealing and stashing funds away in foreign lands, waiting
eagerly for the final collapse, so they could hastily escape to
their great mansions in Europe and America.
How is it that an oil-rich country like
Nigeria cannot boast of one standard airport with functional
facilities, and capacities to respond promptly to emergencies?
The speed with which this nation gave up hope of any likely
survivors in the buried Bellview aircraft was most scandalous.
How on earth can we justify the fact that a whole country like
Nigeria does not have the equipments to immediately excavate the
buried plane? Haven’t we heard of people rescued from the
debris of collapsed buildings several hours after? On the day of
the crash, one aviation official was saying on TV that there was
no way they could have commenced search of the aircraft that
night, because, their helicopters cannot fly at night. Can you
imagine that? How helpless can a country be?
So, if there were those to be rescued and
sent to hospitals that night (assuming any functional hospital
still exists anywhere in Nigeria), they would have been left
there to bleed to death? Nigerians had better stand up to the
so-called leaders in Abuja and tell them that they have had
enough. We are ruled by a bunch of irremediably selfish and
greedy individuals, who use the nation’s resources to purchase
for themselves and members of their families the comfort and
amenities they have wickedly judged Nigerians unworthy of.
Instead of building hospitals here to service the health needs
of everyone, they use the commonwealth to patronize the best
hospitals in better-managed countries. Instead of building
and equipping schools here, they use the nation’s resources to
send their children abroad to study. The aim is to ensure that
the poor remained perpetually deprived and beggarly, while
public funds continue to service the profligacy of their
children indefinitely.
Indeed, the worst disaster to hit this nation
is, perhaps, the emergence of a gaggle of half-done advisers in
Abuja who have worked hard to knock it into the head of the
President Olusegun Obasanjo that “government has no
business” doing a lot of things. Probably inspired by
ill-digested theories plagiarized from poorly written term
papers by freshmen at Harvard, MIT or Oxford, these fellows have
provided pernicious justification for the non-performance of the
present administration. In other countries, when governments
withdraw from some things, it is to stimulate healthy
competition and allow more space for private hands, already
doing well, to flourish. It is not another name for abdication
of responsibility towards the citizenry. In fact, the government
is still actively involved in the area of monitoring and
provision of enabling environment to ensure the success of these
private initiatives. It can even intervene from time to time, to
save situations.
But here the slogan means a different thing
altogether. It means a big bye-bye to work and provides
justification for government’s self-imposed irrelevance. So
unfortunate
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Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye is on the Editorial
Board of Daily Independent (www.independentng.com), a national newspaper puplished in Lagos,
Nigeria, where he also writes a well-read column on the
backpage every Wednesday. Email: scruples2006@yahoo.com
posted 3 November 2005 |
