YET ANOTHER AVOIDABLE DEATH!

Third of June was a peaceful happy Sunday, until the news hit the ground! My sister and I were on our way home from shopping when she said “a Dana plane just crashed”. I thought she said Ghana, so I ‘corrected’ her that the plane crash happened since yesterday (2^nd June) and that I already read about it. 

When we got home, my friend too repeated it and it was then I heard correctly, DANA. A plane belonging to DANA AIR had crashed at Iju-Ishaga. A part of me prayed that kind of prayer that goes ‘Please God, let it not be true’. Another part of my brain calculated away, how many people would be on that plane? I just was not ready to take another bad news. I’ve heard so much of those in recent times that I feel like disappearing from this planet already, not anymore please! It was until evening before I accepted the fact that this one too has come to stay. Another set of people killed in Nigeria from sheer negligence.

Or which adjective would be suitable to qualify the crashing of a plane that last had an emergency landing on the 25^th of May(or even 1st of June as rumours have it) and was flown again on the 3^rd of June. I do not blame DANA AIR who traded the lives of the Nigerian people for money; neither do I blame the the Flight Engineer and Pilots who knew the plane was faulty but went ahead to gamble with their lives, dragging innocent lives with them. I only blame the Nigerian government that refuses to enforce regulations, checks and balances to guide the aviation sector and all sectors in this country. This plane was sold by Alaska Airlines in 2009 after been abandoned for a while due to serious faults. If a plane is no longer worthy to fly Alaskans, why should it be allowed to fly Nigerians? Does it mean a Nigerian’s life is of less value? If someone did his/her job well, that plane should not have been allowed into this country at all.

I understand the company's license has been suspended. My question though is why do we always have to wait until something drastic happens before we act at all. Why is the company's license suspended instead of being withdrawn completely? In saner climes, the management of DANA AIR NIGERIA would go to jail for putting one hundred and fifty-three people on a faulty plane that was abandoned and sold out by its original owner. It is only in Nigeria you will find that an authoritative figure will give permission to business investors or owners to trample upon his countrymen as long as he/she gets ‘his/her own share of the deal’. It irritates me that public officers would award contracts to incompetent hands or connive with contractors to inflate the prices of projects and materials; then when the results of their crookedness manifest in form bad roads, lack of medical equipments and other death-traps, they shed tears, ‘commiserate with those who lost loved ones’, pray that ‘God will grant them the fortitude to bear the loss’ and move on to the next project still with ‘their share’ in mind.

An unidentified staff of DANA AIR confirmed that the pilot alerted the management about the critical condition of the plane on his way to Abuja from Lagos and even suggested returning to Lagos, but he was ordered to go ahead and land in Abuja and bring back passengers to Lagos. This is sheer wickedness. From the information I gathered, if a plane is in such critical state, it is supposed to be flown without passengers to wherever it will be repaired if it must be moved to another location to be repaired. The death of those people was totally avoidable, what we desperately lack is someone to confront DANA with this fact. Until the Nigerian government places high value on the lives of citizens, nobody else will. Local and foreign business owners in Nigeria have been encouraged to treat their employees and customers with little or no regard because there are no consequences for their actions.

There have been cases of factory workers losing their arms or legs to machines without adequate health care from the employer. Some years back, workers were locked up in a factory overnight, a fire accident occurred and they all died as they were unable to escape. I do not remember any serious punishment meted out to the management of that company. A minister once visited the Benin-Ore road and wept, up till now that road takes people’s lives every now and then. 

Can government officials just stop the “weeping” and do just do their jobs??? We may not need to weep so much if we shun the ‘Ghana-must-go’es that exchange hands when decisions are being made, or ensure that everyone does his job well or gets the appropriate consequences for doing otherwise, or create and enforce laws that will uphold rather than degrade human dignity in this country. I will end my thoughts for now by borrowing from the words of our leaders to ‘commiserate’ with those who have suddenly become widows, widowers, fatherless, motherless, orphans due to the plane crash and I also pray that ‘God will grant them the fortitude to bear the loss’.