Rumours of sacrifice, Agagu and Oduah

The crash of the Associated Airlines flight 361 on Thursday, October 3, 2013 in which about 14 persons died is quite tragic and regrettable. Coming at a time when the Federal Government and the aviation authorities have done so much to build on the nation’s enviable safety record is very ironic and paradoxical.

The facts on ground do not, however, lend credence to suggestions that Nigeria’s airspace is unsafe. In fact, the Nigerian airspace has never been safer than it is presently, given the quantum and quality of the safety-critical equipment and infrastructure, as well as certified manpower that the present administration has put in place in the past two years. A quick take:

Apart from the remodelling of airport terminals across the country- a critical component of aviation safety and security which everyone can see; a lot has been done in the area of safety infrastructure. Particular note must be taken of NAMA’s Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria, TRACON, which even the greatest critics of the Aviation Ministry concede is working excellently well; instrument landing systems, airfield lighting and multi-lateration equipment, NIMET’s Doppler Weather Radars, Wind Shear Alert Systems, and Accident Investigation and Prevention, AIPB’s Scientific Laboratory, amongst several others.

There is also NCAT’S state-of-the-art training equipment and simulators as well as NCAA’S Revised Civil Aviation Policy which places high premium on safety.   It is therefore absolutely false, incorrect and misleading to suggest, as some commentators are doing in the wake of the Associated Airlines crash that it is all about terminal rehabilitation and nothing else.

While we take every constructive criticism in good faith, we are totally averse to the ones that are self-serving, false, mischievous and ill-motivated. Femi Fani-Kayode’s latest vituperations against the Aviation Minister, Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, fall squarely into this category. Femi Fani-Kayode had a woefully failed career as Aviation Minister. Now, he is trying his hand as a social critic and public commentator. Tragically, he is failing again, very woefully at that.

For the records, Fani-Kayode served as Aviation Minister for six months (November 2006-May 2007), during which period he is gloating that the nation did not record any plane crash. That no plane crash occurred during these short six months cannot be a laurel worthy of any mention for anyone with higher goals, standards and expectations. But since Fani-Kayode lacks any sense of high achievement, we cannot blame him for living up to his understandably low expectations.

If we were to take six months as the average, I doubt if Oduah whom he is vilifying today would be a culprit. But this is beside the point. The real question to interrogate is what exactly, in terms of projects, policies, institutional reforms or safety infrastructure Fani-Kayode put in place as Minister that ensured that no plane came down from the skies during his watch? Absolutely nothing!

As far as records show, he was clueless, frightened to take any     initiative whatsoever and eventually exited without any garlands. Regrettably, he left a trail of retrogressive missteps still haunting the aviation sector today by the scandalous recruitment of hundreds of misfits into managerial positions in the aviation parastatals! The bulk of the crisis of institutional bankruptcy suffered in the agencies today, and for which Oduah has been busy cleaning up, is directly traceable to this policy of nepotism and ethnic empowerment enthroned by Fani-Kayode during his short sojourn as Minister.

It is therefore very fraudulent for Fani-Kayode to claim credit for what he contributed absolutely nothing to achieve. The 2006 Civil Aviation Act, the closest ‘achievement’ he could have stretched his hands to lay claim to, was already completed and awaiting passage in the National Assembly when he was redeployed to the Aviation Ministry. He did not make a single input to that document.

Far from any positive contribution to the growth and development of the aviation sector, Fani-Kayode left a catalogue of very inglorious imprints on the aviation landscape in his short sojourn in the sector. If anything, what we saw, and still see of him is sheer display of ignorance, arrogance and impunity.

For instance, as Special Assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo, long before he was appointed Minister of Culture and Tourism, Fani-Kayode displayed what later emerged as a cultivated culture of impunity when he refused that his Police Orderly be disarmed or drop his arms and ammunition while trying to board a plane at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos in accordance with international best practice.

When all effort by security operatives to stop the Orderly from carrying the weapons on board failed, then FAAN Airport Manager, one Mr Okuyiga telephoned the pilot to report the danger posed by Kayode and his Police Orderly to other passengers with their dangerous weapons.

Again, when the pilot’s entreaties to Kayode to see reason why Aviation rules and regulations disallowing weapons on board should be obeyed failed, the pilot put off the engine of the aircraft and ordered every passenger out of the plane.

It was only the outrage that other frightened passengers expressed, and their insistence that Kayode and his men cannot be allowed on board with dangerous weapons that saved the day. The Orderly, left with no other choice, surrendered the weapons and the plane departed.

Fani-Kayode never forgave the airport manager and waited patiently for his day of vengeance. Providence would give him the day of reckoning he had been waiting for when he was redeployed, months later to the Aviation Ministry. Expectedly, his very first assignment as Minister was to transfer the very experienced, professional Manager who insisted that global best practice in the Aviation industry be upheld, to a nondescript airport in the Northern part of the country.

It is very instructive that in the entire diatribe against Oduah, Fani-Kayode never claimed any other ‘achievement’ beyond the puerile claim that no plane crashed under his watch! If anyone were to claim credit for the safety record attained during that period, it should in fact be the immediate past Director-General of the NCAA, Dr. Harold Demuren, and not Femi Fani-Kayode.

We cannot therefore hazard comparism between Oduah and Femi Fani-Kayode because there is absolutely no basis for comparism. What the present aviation Minister has achieved is so glaring and substantive that attempting to put her side by side with the loquacious Fani-Kayode is a huge disservice and insult to the psyche of Nigerians who know where we are coming from as far as aviation in Nigeria is concerned.

Fortunately, Oduah has rolled up her sleeves and is currently cleaning up the mess left by Fani-Kayode and his ilk.

Fani-Kayode would do more scandalous things in his very short stint in the ministry. As Minister of Aviation, he not only rejected a report professionally carried out by the then Accident Investigation Bureau into the Bellview air crash of 2005-a very serious and unacceptable interference by all aviation standards, but more so, orchestrated the doctoring of that report into a new one which expectedly exonerated all the stakeholders indicted in the original report.

At the end of the day, the doctored Report turned a no-guilty verdict on the NCAA and Bellview and concocted the fallacy of the existence of a bomb which allegedly exploded and caused the fatal crash. Don’t forget that by making Oduselu to preside over a case for which he was previously indicted, he was acting both as the Jury and the Judge! We are also aware of the several Aviation Correspondents and Newspaper Editors whom Fani-Kayode attempted to compromise to sell the bomb-in-the-aircraft voodoo.

Fortunately, no one fell to the devilish bait. The ghost of the bomb-in-the-aircraft scare was finally laid to rest when the US National Transportation   Safety Board (NTSB) commissioned the FBI to carry out ballistic investigation into the tragic crash which categorically dismissed the probable suggestion of a bomb explosion mid-air.   The nation is yet to fully recover from this scary contraption ingeniously manufactured by Fani-Kayode just to protect his friends and business partners!

Now, a man with such high moral depravity and scant regard for basic rules and regulations in the aviation sector certainly lacks the moral and professional credentials to stand as judge in a case where Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, a Minister who, within a very short span of two years, has beaten all the odds and re-written the chequered history of the Nigeria Aviation Sector, may be standing trial. If anything, the likes of Fani-Kayode ought to be eternally grateful to Oduah for cleaning up a sector that he and his ilk had desecrated and raped in the past.

It is very instructive that in the entire diatribe against Oduah, Fani-Kayode never claimed any other ‘achievement’ beyond the puerile claim that no plane crashed under his watch! If anyone were to claim credit for the safety record attained during that period, it should in fact be the immediate past Director-General of the NCAA, Dr. Harold Demuren, and not Femi Fani-Kayode.

We cannot therefore hazard comparism between Oduah and Femi Fani-Kayode because there is absolutely no basis for comparism. What the present aviation Minister has achieved is so glaring and substantive that attempting to put her side by side with the loquacious Fani-Kayode is a huge disservice and insult to the psyche of Nigerians who know where we are coming from as far as aviation in Nigeria is concerned.

Thus lacking in any substance as far as the aviation sector is concerned, it is therefore understandable why Fani-Kayode would go superstitious, alluding to some unknown spirits operating in 10-year cycles and bringing down planes from the skies! This is the highest display of ignorance by an otherwise lettered individual. But such is the tragedy of Nigeria, that people with little knowledge of a field, and a rabid disdain to learn, are thrust into positions of responsibility.