FOLA OJO FROM PUNCH
This is a frequent song of lamentation of a friend of mine who works at the managerial level of a foreign airline operating between Nigeria, Europe, and the United States of America. A small part of his assignments with the airline is to process travels of government personalities outside of Abuja and Lagos. What the eyes of my friend see weekly prods him to launch out in bitter complaints to whoever cares to listen about what he dubs an orgy of wasteful spendings by government people; both at the federal and state levels in Nigeria.
These government personalities jet out of the country on a weekly basis conducting businesses for either their state governments or the federal arm. Some of them may have legitimate reasons to jump on the airplane frequently running government businesses. But, according to my friend, among them are very many, some as young as 18, 22, 25 years- old, always travelling in first-class cabins with all expenses paid for by these governments. He observed two particular young people who work for two oil-rich state governments. These young men fly out every Friday and return Monday doing ‘government business’ in London and flying first class each route.
First class flight fares run between $7000 and $15000, depending on the season of travel. Characters with no business travelling on the back of the government have become frivolous and flippant frequent fliers, and foul and fetid first-class cabin residents leeching up on Nigerians’ collective patrimonies, and derailing the destiny of a nation and her beautiful people. My friends, Nigeria is a lousy landmine of waste and a citadel of tenebrific corrupt tendencies. And the pernicious profligacy is rooted in our history.
If you are reading this and old enough, you should remember the defunct Nigeria Airways. It was founded in 1958 and existed until 2003 when waste and corruption became too overwhelming, and it stopped breathing. In the early 80s, Nigeria Airways fleet comprised about 30 high-end aircrafts running smooth and profitable business until Nigerian government bandits pushed it off the cliff into untimely death. At the last hour of its official demise, the airline had incurred debts of more than $60 million. The debt is projected to have risen to over $100 million today. We heard ugly stories regarding the defunct national carrier. It ended up moribund as a result of wasteful spending by government folks who secured free first, business, and economy class tickets for their concubines, fleet of wives, husbands, house-helps, friends, and possible enemies too through the airline.
A competent aviation source once told me that some former employees of the defunct carrier hawked off parts of the old aircrafts piece-by-piece to some local carriers. At the time the Nigerian Airways was alive, the Peoples Democratic Party was not in existence, and the All Progressives Congress had not been conceived in the womb. Nigeria’s many problems of waste and corruption have nothing much to do with political parties, but to a culture of waste and pilferage ravaging Nigeria. There was a government, and there were government officials who happened to be Nigerians. All of them helped murder the airline. This has to be more than a culture of waste. It’s got to be delusion and dementia.
About this time in Nigeria, we are debating another national carrier called Nigeria Air. And already, the air around the take-off of the national carrier is already fetidly polluted. Accusations and counter accusations of cumshaw and corruption are flying all over the place about a borrowed Ethiopia Aircraft dressed up to look real but fatally fake, surreally spurious, and shambolically sham. When the logoed ‘flying lies’ landed in Nigeria, alas, it was a teaser, not a tangible testimony. It was a packaged deception, not a dream come true. The process of securing Nigerian Air has already reportedly gulped about N85bn with no single wing of an aircraft to show for it. Ours, unfortunately, is a nation of wild wastrels who have power and authority to steal black-and-blue.
