Tinubu must probe ‘Nigeria Air’ fiasco

The brouhaha surrounding the supposed take-off of Nigeria Air appeared to be a desperate attempt to hoodwink an entire country. In the “Giant of Africa”, the more you look is obviously the less you see. In a country where reptiles and rodents have been known to chew up millions of Naira in public funds with […]

The brouhaha surrounding the supposed take-off of Nigeria Air appeared to be a desperate attempt to hoodwink an entire country.

In the “Giant of Africa”, the more you look is obviously the less you see. In a country where reptiles and rodents have been known to chew up millions of Naira in public funds with mysterious fire outbreaks targeting key government offices and cleaning up the rest, anything is possible and has indeed become possible.

On May 26, 2023, as the iron curtains of time and transience prepared to cast his eight-year-long administration into the dark rooms of history, the Muhammadu Buhari administration finally sanctioned the take-off of Nigeria Air. In a manner typical of the administration, the supposed take-off was giving maximum state coverage with the first “Nigeria Air aircraft” flying into the country.

As the jamboree unfolded, Nigerians who had greeted the launch of Nigeria Air in 2020 with a typically robust dose of cynicism and scepticism waited patiently for the other shoe to drop and drop it did indeed.

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Shortly after take-off, what started as a trickle of rumour that the aircraft used for the take-off belonged to Ethiopia Airlines soon became a tidal wave. As the Nigerian Senate, House of Representatives and media waded into the growing controversy, it soon became clear even to the blind that the whole Nigeria air affair was nothing but another desperate attempt to hoodwink an entire country, one which has however backfired, spectacularly dragging Buhari and Hadi Sirika, the former minister for Aviation, into the muck.

It really does beggar belief that in more than 60 years as an independent country, Nigeria has not been able to couple together a functional national airline. While Nigeria has dithered in this wise much to the embarrassment of Nigerians, its less affluent, much smaller and supposedly inferior neighbours are light years ahead.

It is also beyond belief that, like many national projects embarked upon by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, when Nigeria finally awoke from its slumber to float a national airline, it soon became a national subterfuge.

Or could there be more? In a country afflicted by corruption, especially under an administration for whom corruption was an unofficial policy, was the entire Nigeria Air shambles an elaborate scheme to defraud Nigerians?

Again, it breaks the heart that shortly before he left office, Buhari’s coterie of corrupt and inept officials decided to turn their jarring insensitivity towards an aspect of Nigerian life that has been a source of boundless national tragedy in the recent past – air travel.

On Saturday, December 10, 2005, 60 students of the Loyola Jesuit College Abuja boarded the Sosoliso Airline from Abuja to Port-Harcourt with many days of sunshine filled Christmas holidays to look forward to. Their dreams of a wonderfully time with their families, and tragically their lives, were, however, cruelly aborted when the plane crashed before bursting into flames. It is doubtful that there will ever be another time in the history of Nigeria when tears flowed as much as on that day.

There is little doubt that no matter the view Tinubu has taken about Nigeria, if he wants to improve his image, mangled beyond recognition in the build-up to the elections which produced him as president, he must probe the Nigeria Air fiasco. The new administration must consider it an intolerable insult to the sensibilities of Nigeria that something like that will be floated by those who in their determination to defraud Nigerians are ready to go to any level.

Those behind the charade must be probed, prosecuted and incarcerated. One of the reasons Nigeria remains firmly where it is today, stuck immovably it appears in the mire of underdevelopment, is that all those who have milked the country dry in the past have gotten away with their deeds or at best with just slaps on their wrists. For a country that aspires to more, this is clearly intolerable.

If Nigerians are alarmed that the Nigerian air farce has become public knowledge, one only wonders what more is yet to come to public light.

It is common knowledge that there are within the Nigerian system people who are desperate to milk Nigeria dry and are working day and night to achieve that.

They must be identified and prosecuted. Unless they are, the new administration headed by Tinubu, who himself is dogged by allegations of corruption, will always struggle to find its feet.

If the worst unfolds in the worst manner possible, a stumbling country would stagger to its demise.

Kene Obiezu wrote from Abuja