The first thing the Minister for Aviation did in Malaysia was resign when flight MH370 was no longer found. The person we have been seeing on screen every day for the past six weeks is an acting Minister for Aviation, Flanked by the head of Malaysian Airlines, the Chief Engineer and the Chief pilot. These gentlemen have patiently explained what went wrong and how they are tackling it. They hired hotels and counselors to accommodate the grieving and to console and counsel them. There is a very clear aim of helping and comforting the mourners,
Suppose the plane was a Nigerian, carrier? I have never seen a Minister of Aviation after any airline disaster in Nigeria take responsibility for what has happened. He sends the P.R.O. of the airline or the Ministry to make innane announcements about what he does not know.
We are filled with and told unnecessary technical facts which only go to confuse the people who are already mourning the loss of their loved ones.
After the Soloso crash, I cannot remember whether the black box was ever found but that accident was blamed on human error.
But I jump ahead of myself. When a plane goes down in Nigeria we do not see the Minister. The next thing is that the whole fleet is grounded, not to check whether the rest of the planes are air worthy but as a sort of “punishment” for an airline having an accident. Then all the potential bribe takers in the Ministry and in FAAN, FCAA etc. have then hands out to fleece the company. The Ministry meanwhile deploys no one or if they do it is very casasal to see if they can find the black box. The only serious activity is the arrival of the plane makers and the leasing company who understandably want to know what has happened to their plane by locating the black box.
The most scandalous of these unfeeling attitude happened when
(a) The ADC flight crashed
(b) Dana air crashed.
The Nigerian modus operandus went into gear. All ADC flights were cancelled and planes grounded. Now if you do that to the airline you have killed it because the airplanes had been leased and if the planes are not flying your cost – personnel, air crew, payment of leasing, other debts – continue to mount. By the time the embargo is lifted the company is already bankrupt.
In the case of the ADC, despite the fact that the plane had a large number of eminent men about – Mr. Ajumogobia, a former permanent secretary and Nigeria’s permanent representative to Unesco (Odein’s father) Prof Claude Ake, ete – the search of the black box was peremptory and abandoned after a very casual search. The plane landed in a nearby swamp in Lagos. No Minister said a word in the Dana crash – less than one hour after the crash the airline was grounded. Request for money started to fly all over the place, Mac Donald Douglas/ Boeing came here to try to locate the Black Box which was found. It was then carried to the US for analysis and it was determined that the cause was man error. No Minister ever spoke. It took another 4-5 months for Dana to be recertified after a decision that McDonald Douglas plane of a certain type and age M.D. 80s was no longer to be accepted to fly in Nigeria. Compare the efforts being made for the Malaysian plane and the perfunctory efforts of the Nigerians when the ADC was lost. – up till today no one knows where that plane landed. No one has grounded all Malaysia airline planes.. They are still flying.
In South Korea, after the recent boat tragedy, even the Prime Minister resigned. In Nigeria, no Minister said a world. It was as if talking to the Nigerian public was below the dignity of the Minister. I do not know if Dana is now flying but the airline went through hell as did survivors of victims who erroneously blamed the air line for the none payment of insurance when the Ministry knew very well that if they certify a plane to fly it must have adequate insurance and that the responsibility to pay was with the insurance, not DANA.
The purpose of this piece is really about responsibility of Ministers who must accept that when things go wrong in their Ministry they owe the public an apology and a duty to resign. Like Mrs. Hamilton the culture secretary of Mr. Cameron’s Cabinet in the U.K and unlike several Ministers in the Nigerian cabinet today whose presence has done untold harm to the president they purport to serve. Mrs. Hamilton resigned over a £4000 expense which she had repaid and apologized for. She resigned. In Nigeria we have disputes about missing billions- US$49 billion, US$29 billion, or US$10 billion! We cannot even count how much is missing. Another Minister through unbelievable incompetence causes 21 women to die. Nothing.
There are examples galore to show that taking responsibility and resigning do not actually hurt the President or Prime Minister – resignations rather highten the moral tone of the Cabinet and its Leaders. Please recall Lord Gardner, the British Foreign Secretary, who felt uncomfortable about his advice being ignored by Margret Thatcher in the Falkland Islands War. He resigned. Thatcher went to war and won. Recently the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons had resigned over allegations and criminal trial that he raped one of his parliamentary aids. (They were both homosexuals) after trial but he resigned. He was freed. There is the case of Mr. Colson, the spin doctor of Mr. Cameron who was alleged to have been privy to information obtained by hacking someone’s computer and using it while he was editor of the Daily Sun. Another Tory Minister left the Cabinet when it was revealed that he used parliamentary money to pay for his partner’s apartment – a fellow homosexual.
Julian Barnes once claimed in the New Yorker Magazine that resignation was a bit like creative bankruptcy if effected the right way and at the right time, it can restore the fortunes and even the reputation as was in the case of Mr. John Profumo, in the famous Christen Keller case, a prostitute and alleged Soviet Union informer, for his picadillos with the prostitute. He resigned as Defence Minister but has since been rehabilated and knighted for his good works.
In 1997 Matthew Paris made this observation “like a glorious tropical sunset, a resigning politician is a beautiful sight”. Nigerians take note – we need more glorious tropical sunsets.
Patrick Dele Cole
