When that fully loaded airliner eventually falls out of the sky, which is basically inevitable at this point, nobody should invite me on TV or radio to talk about what I’ve been writing about since May.
My work on Nigerian aviation over the past 6 months has won me the Special Investigative Reporting prize at the PwC Media Excellence Awards and a podium finish at the ABSA African Investigative Journalist of the Year award a few days ago.
Literally everyone has acknowledged the importance of what I have spent months doing – everyone except the Nigerian aviation industry itself, which is completely convinced that playing kalo-kalo with people’s lives is its divine right.
Max Air – probably the most dangerous airline in current operation on Planet Earth is still flying. Its planes with untraceable parts serviced by unlicensed technicians are STILL in the air as you are reading this.
United Airlines is still flying with its wet leased everything and cost-cutting practises that have just sent an Abuja flight to Asaba by mistake, just weeks after a runway excursion by one of its aircraft.
Aero Contractors is still flying, barely 4 months after trying to lift 100 passengers in a 737 with a broken tail wing. Those 100 people still don’t know how guaranteed they were to have died that night if that pilot hadn’t aborted the flight. Till now, no investigation, no sanction, nothing. They also just had a runway excursion just last week.
Green Africa, with its multiple boardroom issues and question marks over its maintenance habits, is also still flying.
The NCAA is still continuing the legacy left behind by Hadi Sirika. Everybody, from the regulators to the airlines – even the pilots whose lives are also at risk – everybody is DETERMINED that nothing must change.
To kill Nigerians in a kerosene fireball is their divine right and who the fuck does that journalist guy think he is for trying to stop it from happening.
Who indeed.
