Needed: A national carrier

Now, to attend this meeting, I have to get there, obviously. To do this, I must board a plane from either Lagos or Abuja and sleep in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital and a leading Airport tourist destination in Africa. On my return, I must sleep in Addis Ababa. The hotel expenses have been built […]

Now, to attend this meeting, I have to get there, obviously. To do this, I must board a plane from either Lagos or Abuja and sleep in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital and a leading Airport tourist destination in Africa. On my return, I must sleep in Addis Ababa. The hotel expenses have been built into the ticket of the Ethiopian Airline that takes you. You must experience Ethiopian cultural and social atmosphere, through their cuisine and other adjuncts of the hospitality culture for which Ethiopia has become better known, long after the demise of Emperor Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah. What am I saying in essence? It is that for a two-day Conference within the African continent, I must prepare for a four-night trip, at best!
Now, there are a number of questions to address from this Avian-related anomaly. Why should there be so much travel impediments within Africa—what with so many years of OAU and now AU? If I was to travel to the United States of America, it would take me only one day to get there. Even travelling to Australia, nowadays, will not require such temporal waste. Why is it so difficult for us to connect with one another on our own continent when we can do so more easily and very freely with other continents? Even within the West African sub-region, within the ECOWAS  territory, you still have to take connecting flights. For instance, the last time I went to Guinea, we had to have a stop-over, take another Boarding pass in Togo, another country, before proceeding to Conakry.   What is the true value of our regional and sub-regional  organizations if we cannot flow into one another as sister-nations within a region and a continent?
I understand, and this is the point I wish to make, in the end, that these travel obstructions help to boost the economy of other nations—Ethiopia, South Africa and to some extent, Kenya—all of whom boast of viable, effective and  vibrant national careers. Apart from national pride, there is the revenue-yielding potential for these countries flowing directly from their Aviation industries. And, in fact, that is the point. I have marveled, and so have many, that Nigeria is the largest, if more in potentiality than in reality, economy in Africa, and the country poised to drive the rest of Africa as the continent of the twenty-first century. Yet, Nigeria ignores the importance of dominating the continental Air-space. Nigeria has no national career. Nigeria’s colours do not radiate across the skies of the world through the sounds and sights of our national planes. I do not know how many other countries of our stature and economic promise that provides Airports—some of which are being renovated and reconstructed at huge sums of money, for the planes of other countries to take off and land from, cornering huge profits by each  taxing and landing as we watch with stupefaction and bewilderment. Eighty per cent of the planes that enter and depart from Ethiopia are owned by Ethiopian Airlines. Have you been to the Murtalla International Airport recently? You must have seen the human-sized, disarmingly gorgeous, multi-viewable Ethiopian image arresting your eyes and attention with luminousness and laugher-readiness. That picture is what I call appropriate branding. Ethiopia is all over you in your own national air-space.
 This situation brings a well of nostalgia when you remember that it has not always been so that Nigeria has no national career of its own. In the eighties, before Babangida’s  regime, Nigeria Airways was all over the world. And in the country too. Air travel was easy and accessible. We flew cheaply from Ilorin to Maiduguri, and from Lagos to Kano. Nigeria boasted of some of the best pilots from around the Globe. When and how did we get to this sorry pass when Nigerians must do slow and difficult, merry-g-rounding air business with the careers of other nations other than our own?  Some lousy excuses have been given for nailing the coffins of Nigeria Airways. One is that government cannot run  businesses, including Aviation businesses. So it is better to live such trade matters to private concerns that can run business better and make profit from it. That was why some of the international Airports were wrecked in Ilorin, Maiduguri, Port-Harcourt and Kano, among many of the Airports mercilessly slashed down by government in the eighties, by mere political fiat rather than for deep and rational considerations. Since then, no government, including the present, has considered or given observable and notable thought to the expediency of restoring ruined national patrimonies, including our national flag flying on the winged sides of our national Aircrafts, branding and burnishing us across the world. Besides, as Ethiopia and South Africa, have shown, Aviation industry is a money-spinner. As we look beyond the oil/gas monoculture, the nation badly needs a national career. Some of these private concerns  running our air industries, many with criminal impunity, discourtesy and all that, do so because there is inadequate competition and standard which should be set and regulated by the nation’s Air agencies, led by the nation’s own dominant career, providing both model, bench-mark and operating ethics for others to follow and obey.
More importantly, the regional and sub-regional bodies in Africa must realize the importance of communication through transportation, especially air transportation, which is still the fastest and safest mode of movement across wide expanses of spaces and territorial waters. It is unacceptable that, outside of the internet, I cannot physically connect with my brethren in other parts of Africa without using foreign careers or spending days on the careers of a few other nations of Africa. Nigeria should also seize the initiative and re-establish an aggressive, well-run and well-maintained national career, for or national pride and for our economy.