IT is very interesting watching the Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, shedding crocodile tears at a press conference on Sunday, June 3, 2012.
After the Dana Flight 0992 disaster, which claimed the lives of 153 Nigerians, including toddlers.
Flight School
It is even more annoying and embarrassing, when President Goodluck Jonathan joined the minister by crying like a woman, when he visited the crash site at Iju-Ishaga, Lagos, a few days later.
Aviation Colleges
It has almost become the norm, or do we say part of governance, for Nigerian government officials to cry shamelessly when any disaster hits hapless Nigerians, as if the display of emotion would bring back the lives lost prematurely to the negligence of the government.
Recall that the aviation sector in the country went through some turbulence a few years ago, culminating in the crash of the Bellview
Airlines Flight 210 on October 22, 2005, which killed all the 117 passengers on board, and the Sosoliso Flight 1145 crash on December 10, 2005, which claimed prematurely the lives of 105 passengers out of the 108 onboard, including over 60 pupils of Loyola Jesuit College.
One had thought that the days of avoidable air disasters were gone for good, only for the Dana Air disaster of June 3 to shatter our hope and joy of safe skies.
The problem with the country’s aviation sector, as with other sectors really, has always been that of misplaced priority and forcing a square peg into a round hole.
Stella Oduah certainly falls into the latter category as the Minister of Aviation, as she is a square peg that Jonathan is forcing into the round hole of the sensitive sector.
When ministers are assigned their portfolios after the razzmatazz of the National Assembly screening, where bribes are sometimes offered in exchange for endorsement of the lawmakers, stakeholders in various fields tend to be at alert to know who is going to head their sectors.
For instance, the doctors are happy when a medical doctor (not even a pharmacist or a nurse) is made the Minister of Health; journalists would always want an information manager to head the Ministry of Information; an educationist as Education Minister would naturally thrill the education sector, and so on.
But, in the Aviation Ministry, all kinds of characters have always been in charge, hence, you have consistent, devastating and avoidable air disasters. Stella Oduah is not different.
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