Oduah: Squandermania in the name of security

Posted by admin Aviation, Headlines Friday, October 18th, 2013

The revelation that the Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah, received two cars worth N255m from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority compounds integrity issues on her table, Solaade Ayo-Aderele writes

The Minister of Aviation, Ms. Stella Oduah, has come under severe criticisms following a revelation that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority bought two bullet-proof vehicles worth $1.6m (N255m) for her. The armoured vehicles were reportedly delivered to her in August.

The revelation is coming at a time when certain events in the aviation industry, which she supervises, have become a cause for concern, not just for Nigerian air travellers, but also for the world at large.

Oduah was confirmed as the aviation minister and sworn in on July 2, 2011. She was deployed to the ministry on July 4, 2011. But between then and now, the industry has witnessed two major air crashes under her watch.

The first was the Dana Air crash in Lagos on June 3, 2012, in which 163 people died; while the latest is the Associated Airlines crash of October 3, 2013, also in Lagos, which claimed 15 lives.

Apart from these fatalities, many air passengers had escaped death by a whisker on some occasions. One of such happened a day after the Associated Airlines’ crash — a Kabo Airlines’ Boeing 747-400 plane taking 512 pilgrims to Saudi Arabia had made an emergency landing at the Sokoto airport with deflated tyres, damaging the airport’s Instrument Landing System.

Again, last Sunday, an IRS Airlines Fokker-100 plane carrying 99 passengers also made an emergency landing at the Kaduna airport, after developing hydraulic problems mid-air.

The nation’s embarrassment is not limited to the Nigerian airspace, though, as a Nigerian registered cargo airplane had also crashed in Accra, Ghana, on June 2, 2012.

While ‘natural’ disasters may not necessarily be anyone’s doing, the fact remains that many things are wrong with the nation’s aviation industry, but the helmsman seems ill-equipped to deal with the situation decisively

For one, the haste with which the licence of Dana Airlines was restored barely three months after the 2012 incident, despite the embarrassment it caused the Federal Government, was condemnable. Though Nigerians expressed disappointment with the government, wondering if it cared about citizens’ wellbeing at all, only the painful exit of another set of Nigerians, 16 months later, compelled the aviation minister to withdraw, afresh, the operating licence of Dana, which industry watchers had long suspected of operating aircraft with questionable capability.

That Oduah has no proper grasp of what is going on in the industry she supervises may not be an exaggeration, considering the fact that some of the aircraft being used to ferry Nigerians across the nation and beyond have seen better days and are therefore unfit for the airspace of any sane country.

Take, for, instance, the revelation that the aircraft that caused the latest bloodbath in Lagos is 23-year-old Brazilian-made. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the useful life of an aircraft is over once the economics of maintenance exceed the value of the airplane.

Industry analysts say airliners and business jets are built with a certain number of cycles in mind — a cycle being the pressurisation and depressurisation of the cabin. To maintain an aircraft’s fiscal feasibility, experts say, certain items must be replaced on a regular basis, whether they need it or not.

Based on the bloody accidents and near-mishaps that we have witnessed in recent times, one wonders if the Nigerian aviation sector has superb standards and maintenance regulations for domestic airlines. If there are, they don’t seem to be enforced. This is a dent on the integrity of the aviation minister.

In self-defence, Oduah shocked many people when she described some of the air crashes as an act of God. On another note, she had said the sector needed injection of funds if air travel must be safe and secure. This being the case, isn’t it a contradiction that the same ministry that desperately shops for operating funds is also engaged in a spending spree, buying amoured cars for the minister?

Besides, it is absolutely unethical for Oduah to have accepted “gifts” from the NCAA, being an agency she supervises. If there were threats to her life as she claims, there are constitutional provisions for that, as a bona fide Nigerian, even if she is not occupying public office.

She should have exploited that means, instead of accepting gifts from an agency whose shoddy handling of the aviation sector has contributed enormously to the deaths of innocent Nigerians and citizens of other nations who were unfortunate to have patronised Nigerian airlines.

The aviation minister can still right the wrongs in the sector; all it requires is the political will, which she currently seems to lack. And this appears to have been compounded by the moral burden that the obvious coercion of the NCAA represents.

Observers are also worried that Oduah may not be the only minister who breathes down too heavily on the parastatals they supervise. It is common knowledge that many of them compel such agencies to foot the bills of the transport, accommodation, feeding and more, each time they (ministers) have to attend one function or the other, as organised by the agencies. This is a corrupt practice that only a country like Nigeria, where ethical issues are taken with levity, condones.wp_posts