Sosoliso sadness

We're all drunk with sadness at the story of all those children perishing near Port Harcourt. The aviation minister is away in Canada - at some kind of air safety conference. What bitter irony. With Bellview, then Kaduna and now Sosoliso all within just over a month, there must be a wall of pressure from the public mounted to ask why and roar for change.

It is time that the corruption in the air transport industry is blown away: runways must be maintained, aircraft must be checked thoroughly before every flight, electric storms must always be avoided, old planes must not be allowed to fly. From what I read, the last DC-9 was made in 1982, which means that the Sosoliso plane was at least 23 years old. In a country with no maintenance culture, old planes + cost cutting in vital areas is a recipe for tragedy. The world watches Nigeria and waits for the country to get its act together, instead of continually embarrasing itself with the multiple forms of its own inadequacy.

Loyola Jesuit in Abuja is one of the best schools in the country, with bright young minds nurtured in an atmosphere of Jesuit discipline and moral principles. We hear that a mother and a father yesterday lost all three of their children from this place: a future wiped from the face of the planet. What can be said to console them, after such a senseless death? Who will be brought to account as a gesture to nudge them in the direction of atonement (a ten thousand mile journey)?

The bitter pill to swallow is that since Bellview, nothing seems to have changed: no one lost their job or was held to account (Bellview didnt stop flying). No enquiry was made, no black box was found (apparently). Instead, those lives have sunk into the thick mud of history. African lives have no value; faces become contours in the mud and then are trodden over.