The Shortchanging Of A Generation By Charles Ofoji

BY Charles ofoji

The Dana flight 992 tragedy at a touching distance from the Lagos airport has again exposed the legendary greed of the ruling class. Nigeria was equipped with all a nation needs to be great, except that our rulers (not really leaders) sit on the aspirations of Nigerians and God’s desire for them. The greed and callousness of our rulers provides a case study of the mindset, inhumanity and insatiability of the specie called human beings. It is an illustration that God must have underestimated the wickedness and heartlessness of man, when he thought He could create man in His own image.

Over 153 lovely people perished on the ill-fated Dana 992 plane because some coldhearted business people, who were hell-bent on maximizing profit (and who are allowed by an irresponsible government to exploit Nigerians) allowed an overloaded troubled MD 83 plane that was not airworthy to fly. Such number of lives were destroyed because those whose duty it was, failed woefully or colluded with greedy capitalists as they failed to regulate what they were mandated to police. If they did what they were supposed to do, how would such a plane be authorized to fly in Nigerian airspace? The Dana Air MCDonnell Douglas (MD 83), I learnt, had a well- known history of worrying defaults even before its original owners, a US-based Alaska Airlines sold it to Dana Airlines on February 17, 2009. The aircraft was acquired by Alaska Airline sometime in November 13, 1990 with registration number N944AS. Twelve years later, in November 2002, it developed fault and did an emergency diversion due to smoke and electrical smell in the cabin area, which engineers said was “because light ballast had over-heated”. Four years later, the plane’s shape worsened when on August 20, 2006, it was again evacuated after landing at the Long Beach, California “due to a chaffed wire bundle that discharged and produced smoke in the cabin area again.”

Also a DANA employee disclosed that “the ill-fated Dana Air flight 0992, MC Donnell Douglas was faulty shortly after it left Lagos and stopped over in Calabar. The Indian owners of the airline threw caution to the wind and insisted that the plane must fly in a bid to maximize profit, thereby sending the plane over to Abuja to pick passengers, when it should have being returned to Lagos for further repair.” For sure, they can do whatever they like. Is it not Niger? If the regulatory agencies were alive to their responsibilities, that plane could have been grounded long ago and those 153 people would have been alive today. For money and other little favours, they betrayed their brothers and sisters.

The first thing I said when I heard about the crash was: how could a plane crash in a 45 minutes journey, with airports littered on the route where it could make an emergency landing? How could both engines fail at the same time?  Answers to my questions later emerged. From what we all now know, over 153 lives were cut short as a result of corruption and the ongoing shortchanging of our generation by people we entrusted leadership to.

All for money, and no matter the costs,  Nigerian leaders sold and will continue to sell their fellow country men and women. The Dana crash is only an offshoot of the shortchanging of a generation. If the leaders cared for the people, such a plane would never be allowed to operate in the first place. Despite the fact that Nigeria tops the list of countries with the most expensive inland flights, planes that have been rejected in other climes, where flights are even cheaper, are smuggled into Nigeria, with the connivance of untrustworthy leaders for business. In so far as the pockets of those in charge are filled with bribe-money, fellow Nigerians could perish for all they care. Our leaders have no regard for our people. They don’t even see why Nigerians who pay a cut-throat $200 US dollars for a 45 minutes journey should be entitled to a decent flight. 

How in hell could the majority of the management staff of DANA be foreigners? Because our leaders share in the bounty, they look away. Nigerian jobs must be for Nigerians first. It is so all over the world. But unfortunately, in the case of Nigeria, due to corruption, our leaders don’t care for their fellow Nigerians.

Just as they don’t care when Nigerians are fed with rubbish food items and provisions, despite the fact that they pay more for groceries than people in the West, whose governments force manufacturers to conform to agreed standards and keep the price reasonable.

Our government has banned almost everything because it wants only some businessmen to flourish, yet they pay fake lip service to a free market. How can our leaders deny Nigerians access to a better life in this era of globalization? Are we practicing communism? How could a democratic government dictate to the people what to eat or buy? Just because those in government get a share of the monopolists’ profit.  This aside, what breaks my heart is that government allows them to sell at cut-throat prices. How could a 1.5l bottle of water sell for almost $1 in a country where the minimum wage is a meager N18.000? Nigerians today pay more for everything than their counterparts in the West who earn about 20 times more than them. Yet we expect to rid the country of corruption. Where do we expect the workers to get the money to stay alive from? 

We can mourn that over 153 people died due to corruption ( and my heart goes out to the directly bereaved), but we should not lose sight of the fact that so many Nigerians die daily because our leaders allow industrialists and businessmen to feed us with rubbish, which they call food and beverages. Diabetes, High blood pressure and other heart related diseases, obesity, bad eye sight, thyroid gland disorders etc, are on the increase because our government decline to control what Nigerians are served as groceries, especially salt and sugar.

Because our leaders have shortchanged us for money, they look away as capitalist predators devour the populace. The DANA air disaster is only part of the aftermaths of the shortchanging of our generation. 

The government, as usual, has set up another panel to find out what happened. Nigerians have little faith in such games any more. In serious countries, prosecution for murder and manslaughter should follow the outcome of such investigation since obviously the people that died ought not to have died if some people did their jobs.

checkpointcharley@yahoo.de