By Chris Ihidero
I spent this past week in Port-Harcourt at the Port-Harcourt Book Festival, holding a workshop on screen-writing, courtesy of the British Council. It was a worthwhile experience, especially seeing the participants come to the realization that traditional gatekeepers of content production and distribution platforms are a dying breed and digital technology and online distribution platforms have brought forth infinite possibilities for content producers.
Going to Port-Harcourt of course meant taking a flight and, with Feyi Fawehinmi‘s admonition that those of us who still take local flights in Nigeria should have our heads examined ringing in my ears, it was a torturous journey.
The local wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, where Arik Air flies from, has been rebuilt by the current Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah. From outside it looks grand, grand in the way small things look grand in Nigeria. Truth be told, we are not great at building grand things as a nation. It is now more comfortable than the old local airport and operations flow better, but if you look beyond the surface, it is the classic case of putting gauze over a festering wound. What is sadder still is that even the gauze isn’t good enough to cover the wound so the stench escapes and fouls the air. This is indicative of what the minister of aviation is all about: the skies are not safer for people traveling by air in Nigeria but the airports are looking nicer, although the cracks are beginning to show. The next time you fly through any of the newly refurbished airports, look closer and it will be clear to you that they have been built with really poor materials. The roof at the baggage claim area of the Lagos airport is about to cave in.
All of the above should have prepared us for the recent discoveries concerning the armored BMW cars. This minister of aviation, like many before her, does not know what she’s doing. Or, perhaps, she knows what she’s doing when it comes to siphoning money from government coffers, but clearly, it is the madness that this country continues to exhibit that allows someone like her to become a minister in the first instance. This, of course, says a lot about the president but, as you all probably know already, I have no faith in the abilities of this president in any capacity whatsoever.
I really don’t care how much those cars really cost and who got what kickback and who else is involved in this kind of thing in the Nigerian government. If you search deep enough, not one of them will come out clean. Contrary to the alarming reactions from so many people, this isn’t surprising at all. When a critical mass come to the realization that people in government in Nigeria are there first and foremost to better themselves individually in the most shameless way, then we will no longer be surprised that a minister can buy two cars for N225m.
We all should forgive Stella Oduah for she knows not what she’s doing as a minister. She never claimed to have any knowledge of aviation matters and she wasn’t the one who appointed herself as minister anyway. She merely chaired the women’s wing of the president’s campaign drive or something and her reward is the ministry whose duty it is to keep the skies safe for people traveling by air in Nigeria.
Yoruba people say when you give even a madman a hoe, he will clear the bush in his path. By being given a ministerial position she should not have touched even with a ten-mile pole, what did you expect from her? Our faith in miracles is a problem and I totally blame the truly dead Arch. Bishop Benson Idahosa and all Pentecostal Christian preachers for this. Breeding a country on miracles is a truly dangerous thing: a critical mass of a nation’s population who believe in outlandish miracles – such as, that a novice can keep our skies safe through the grace of God – probably deserve whatever comes their way.
Anyway, she’s currently in Jerusalem on pilgrimage, most likely to ask God for a huge chunk of forgiveness from Nigeria’s yearly allocation.
If God forgives, who are we not to?
