Nigeria AirLies

For the majority of Nigerians going home for end-of-year festivities, the Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) is not an option. Yet, for many driven by a sense of “ours is ours” -- not “mi casa es su casa,” the ‘Flying Elephant’ is always the first option. Who wants to hop over to Europe within the same time one could be in Nigeria and, in addition, take their insults? It is better to take the insults from your kind! And it’s cheaper too. No one I know flies for fun. We all want to get from point A to B safely within the shortest time possible and affordable. Two months ago, I was going to take the ours-is-ours option, but there was “no available seat in the nearest future,” or so my travel agent told me. He recommended Virgin Atlantic (VA), and he got a good deal with less than two weeks to go. Virgin it was. This was before they told me about extorting over $40:00 from Nigerian-passport holders -- even when they don’t want to step out of Heathrow. I wanted to cancel in protest, but I needed to go.

The London-Lagos flight was booked rock-solid. But for the less than ten Euro passengers, others were “Ndiisiojii” (Blackheads), as Ndiigbo would say -- all presumably Nigerians. I didn’t think much of the big Boeing bird. While freshening up at my sister’s in a near-airport neighborhood before continuing to Enugu, a loud plane noise startled me. I looked out of the balcony. I saw the same plane struggling to overcome gravity. It was huge. It was beauty-full. Weeks later, I was on the same flight back to London. It was full. I asked the air hostess, by the way, how many people were on board.

“Four hundred and twenty, luv,” she divulged in an unmistakable Cockney accent.

Now you know why every Euro airline makes a killing in Nigeria. Nigeria is a gigantic goose, and it lays golden eggs. The private, domestic operators are also doing well. For about a hundred bucks, they fly to any part of the country -- as long as there are passengers headed that way and a place to put down the plane. While I was waiting for the second Sosoliso shuttle to Enugu, two flights left for Port Harcourt; many of the passengers could not wait for the irregular flight to Owerri. Now you know why Sir Richard Branson is taking on the arrogance of Air France on the London-Port Harcourt route and why he would dive into the moribund Nigeria Railways.

The flight to Enugu was a smooth ride, even though the plane had seen several sky shades in some Slavic state. The major issue occupying my thoughts was the fate of Enugu International Airport, Emene. I hoped it was not a pack of political hot air or air lies. When it was formally declared an international airport many moons ago, I was thrilled that we would be spared what Ms. Isioma Daniels called “chaotic Lagos” in her controversial ThisDay article “The World at their feet….” If Miss World contestants were spared the loathing and lunacy of Lagos, many of us would wish to be so spared. Nothing against Lagos, my friends who grew up there think it is the best place on earth, the New York of Africa. Good for them, but no one willfully flies into New York to get to Los Angeles, unless you have something stewing in the Big Apple.

As soon as the 50-minute Sosoliso flight touched down, I looked out for changes. The tarmac was great. Not much had changed in terms of arrival formalities. I came back to the airport the following week. I could not travel to Abuja, as I had informed the Aviation Minister’s office, because there was no concrete arrangement to speak with ranking Aviation officials. It would have been a sin to waste scarce monetary resources meant for the vast village destitution on a jamboree to Abuja, FCT. Yes, it was that bad. Nonetheless, a look around the airport revealed that the runway as-was could take wide-bodied aircrafts conveniently. It needed more work though: restructuring of buildings for international reception (train chute, immigration and customs bays, flight-connection lobbies, etc.) and standard hangers.

Later at a pub outside the airport, as two air force planes whooshed by noisily, I commented casually to my companion that the airport might not be ready for international business. “I beg to disagree, sir,” interjected someone who seemed to know a thing or two about the issue. Tell me about it! He obliged: “Don’t forget that Enugu was the capital of Biafra and that planes flew in and out of here.” This is 2002, I reminded him. “So? I have been to many African countries lately; Enugu Airport is not bad at all.” So what is delaying the death of the damn dog? He didn’t get it; he is not Igbo. I explained. He continued: “We could start with the Jerusalem Pilgrims -- as is done with the Hajj operations.” He is a Muslim, by the way. “Then we could move on to the lucrative Christmas season, bypassing Lagos; and ‘they’ can cry all they want.”

I do not know to whom ‘they’ referred. I didn’t ask. It was not necessary. To do the right thing, we sometimes step on the toes of business-as-usual brigade. Moreover, the man was so subject-passionate I didn’t want to distract him. He knew the exact location of the regional Customs [Presidential Road] and Immigration [Independence Layout] offices. The way he talked, you would think he was reading from an invisible script. So, when the Minister of Aviation appointed Captain Moses Gowon to head the management of Hajj airlifts, I wondered if this Muslim Enuguite could manage the Pilgrimage airlifts. Maybe, just maybe, it will take someone willing to step on toes to put the “international” in Enugu International Airport, Emene.

From what I saw on CNN during the Thanksgiving terror in Mombasa, Kenya, Enugu is most definitely ready for international flights, especially starting with special charter flights at Christmas. Arrangements are already advanced to jumpstart a direct flight from America, based on the open-air agreement. It will be a shouting shame if at the end of this administration with two Igbo ministers… oops, federal ministers of Igbo extraction… in charge of aviation and transport, the issue of Enugu International Airport remains unresolved.

Let no one cry foul or favoritism: now ex-Minister Dr. Segun Agagu recently made sure the southwest would have uninterrupted power supply in 2004, which is in-line with the relocation of Ala Oji power station in Abia State to Ota in Ogun State. Should we dwell on the multi-billion Mambilla hydro station or on the communication setups in remote villages of Adamawa State? No, we should not begrudge development; let’s spread it. Here, in the neglected southeast corner of the country we still share, one is only asking for ONE airport from which to go and come as the people please and as enshrined in the Constitution.

Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja is everything you must have heard or read: clean, courteous, and calming. It was tout-free… almost, and even posh. The conveyors worked -- unlike in London eight hours later. No, the flight took six hours; there was an almost two-hour delay. Why? Air traffic controllers were on strike. The pilot assured us that they (Virgin Atlantic) would “settle” the matter soon. They did. According to Daily Trust of November 12, 2002, the controllers were protesting the arrest of one of their colleagues at Benin City Airport on Saturday, November 9. His crime: he dared to delay an aircraft taking the wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Titi Abubakar, to Abuja. The man simply pointed out that the Benin Airport airspace was usually closed at 7.00 p.m.; no plane leaves or lands thereafter. He did relent, eventually; but, for embarrassing “oga madam,” her security operatives hauled the “bloody civilian” into police hellhole. Doesn’t it remind you of ancient Abacha days?

Virgin Airways flies. Nigeria Airways fumbles. Many agree that that the only solution to NAL nightmare is to relieve the government of direct commercial involvement. Unfortunately, some powerhouse politicians want their petty paws on it. It should be obvious to anyone with some knowledge of the aviation industry why they oppose any form of joint venture agreement (JVA) -They want NAL sold as scrap. The Minister of Aviation Dr. (Mrs.) Kema Chikwe knows. She has said so unequivocally. The Christmas season is here. The Flying Elephant lives up to its name -- Elephants don’t fly, do they. After this season’s madness, it must be obvious to the Minister that she does not need another panel or committee to look into the endless clumsiness of Nigeria Airways, that the crippled elephant should be allowed to rest, and that whatever is worth something should be plucked out and put to other uses.

Spare the stick, spoil the student: As if NAL is not over-pampered and over-protected, the government recently constituted a committee of its topmost officials (Kanu Agabi -- Justice, Kema Chikwe -- Aviation, Madaki Ali – Works and Housing, Nwosu -- Health , and Head of Service Mahmoud Yayale Ahmed) under the chairmanship of retired General T. Y. Danjuma (defense) to recover 5.2 billion naira owed NAL between 1983 and 1999, as determined by Justice Obiora Nwazota Panel. [See Daily Trust, December 12.] One wonders which British ministers Tony Blair would delegate to break the knees of British Airways debtors. NAL should spare us its excruciating inefficiency and excessive indiscipline and now lousy lies. Or, if you prefer Information Minister Professor Jerry Gana: “bad management, lack of accountability, fraud, excessive impress and the CES travel agreement and manipulation of excess baggage among others.” Not even Enron was this bad with money.

How could anyone explain that a Boeing 777 landed at MMIA with over 300 passengers but without their luggage! Nigeria Airways -- no points for guessing right -- cited “enormous weight”! [See The Guardian, Tuesday, December 3, 2002.] According to the report, NAL officials took away even basic items of personal hygiene carried as hand luggage, promising to turn then over in Lagos. People who had prescription medications to take and special functions to attend were left high and dry. “And instead, they made us to go to the luggage pick-up area in Lagos for three hours before hinting that the bags might not have arrived with the plane,” they said.

This is nothing short of gross inefficiency and possible sabotage. The earliest the passengers could get their stuff, according to NAL General Manager of Public Affairs Mr. Chris Azu Aligbe, was December 8 -- more than a full week later. Even then, the lucky ones had to bribe shameless officials to get their legitimate luggage. If you think it is only on the New York-Lagos flight that bags go walking, think again. The parents of a family friend flew Nigeria AirLies… oops Airways from Lagos through JFK on the first week of December. The plane was not even full. Their bags did not arrive. Was this “manipulation of excess baggage” too? Should we go on? Remember that a Nigerian passenger had to buy aviation fuel in New York for a plane already loaded and ready to take off? [See www.kwenu.com/publications/aluko/airways_fuel.htm] This was on May 4, 2002, the same day an EAS BAC 1-11 plane crashed in Kano. Recall that on October 29 Nigeria Airways cancelled two flights in Nigeria as a result of non-availability of aviation fuel. Virgin and others flew nonstop, in and out.

Now the law firm of Baltimore-based (Maryland, USA) Fagbenle & Strouse, LLC has slapped NAL with a $1.3 million suit plus damages and costs. The statement reads: “Over the past 10 days, the passengers have been asked on several occasions to report to the airport for their luggage, sometimes twice a day. To our chagrin and those of our clients, as at the time of this press release (2 weeks after flight arrival), some of the passengers are yet to receive some or any of their luggage. [ThisDay, Tuesday, December 17, 2002] This could signal the beginning of the end for NAL on the New York route, if the legal suit is improperly handled. It is not beyond a Queens, NY judge to impound the Boeing 777. It has happened before in Europe, which was why NAL international operation was renamed “Air Nigeria.”

“Bad management” does begin to describe this sort of immoral ineptitude. Assuming they overloaded inadvertently, any good airline would have charted a small cargo plane to haul the luggage over to Lagos the following day. I hope they charged for the obvious “excess luggage,” or did someone smuggle in sacks of stone and left the legitimate luggage back in New York’s JFK? It did not take 1968-69 Biafrans in America that long to get planes, find volunteer pilots, and haul relief material over to blockaded Uli –- a wartime airstrip, designed and maintained by then Architect Alex Ekwueme. The same airstrip today sits on a decrepit stretch of Onitsha-Owerri road that President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday, December 7, 2002 flagged off his reelection bid and, for history buffs interested in connecting the dots, it is on the same stretch that the final formal scenes of Nigeria-Biafra War played itself out on Monday, January 12, 1970 with then Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo directing. And the rest is history in the making.

I have a declared interest in the success of Minister of Aviation Dr. (Mrs.) Kema Chikwe because many of us in New Jersey consider her one of us and, because I am from Enugu, she is also a home-girl -- albeit via Egbu, Owerri. The latest Air Nigeria JVA with Airwing Aerospace Limited (AAL) is a headache she could have done without. But, knowing her, she would rather make the move and fail than hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing, and do nothing. Unfortunately, the setup she is striving to salvage is so sick and infested with unbridled corruption that President Obasanjo, with all his executive powers, cannot turn it around. Was it not the President who bemoaned recently that he left 40 planes in 1979 and in 1999 no one could account for them? Dr. Chikwe must not allow NAL nightmare to delineate her legacy. She must fight it with all her might, even if it is the only thing she does before May 29, 2003. The best bet for our dear Daa Kema -- as we fondly call her -- is to look up, count her blessings, and go elsewhere. Where?

A lot of work has gone into the Enugu International Airport and Owerri Airport. She needs to take it to the next level, even if she has to drag Airwing and their acclaimed Singapore connections down there. It could be a showcase of what the JVA would have become if the forces of darkness did not invest so much money and petty propaganda in killing it, warts and all. On the political pedestal, she should have no problems getting the administration to rain some money on the other side of the Niger for a change. With Dr. Alex Ekwueme out of the shadows of indecision and onto the stage of swordsmen, she should get her way easily with a presidency that is roundly accused of neglect by her home base. And she has weeks to pull the kernel from the inferno, especially now that money has been released finally for the internationalizing of Enugu airport. She should personally make sure the project is properly executed within schedule and that it goes beyond widening the runways to flagging off the first international flight since 1967.

In Igboland, Enugu and Owerri airports will definitely define the legacy of Dr. Chikwe’s historic attainment, no iota of doubt about it. It will be a refreshing feat in an era when no other minister of Igbo extraction can point out ONE project he brought to the southeast zone (Igboland). Forget the fleet of fat SUVs (“okwuotoekeneeze”) in sprawling village estates and on private roads. These are concrete carbuncles in a desert of destitution. Fortunately for the Minister, the work is almost done: She has secured open-air agreement with USA, passengers are plenty, and private investors/operators I know are waiting for landing rights, ready to go. Enugu has been formally designated “international”; that’s done. Owerri now has all that it takes to take-off and land safely with goods to and from such flourishing centers of Igbo commercial activities as Libreville (Gabon), Cotonou, and Cote d’Ivoire. The two setups need a less than massive infusion of funds and a little personal push from the top to consolidate the gains to a point of cost-effective irreversibility.

As far as Nigeria Airways is concerned, she should stop spending her energy squabbling with a lying and cheating cabal and contentious cliques bent of cannibalizing the national carrier. They cannot run the setup, obviously. They won’t let any JVA succeed. The place is so infested with unmitigated mismanagement and incomparable incompetence it will take a messiah to turn it around, not a team of top ministers. The cancerous corruption stinks to high heavens. Not that others are odor-free but, question: How else do we explain that other departments are doing so well while NAL continues to embarrass the country? Simple: The fragrance of fart foretells the taste of feces. At NAL, the depth of the decay is immense; the stench, intense. No wonder the hardworking Minister striving to sanitize the sty was considered a hindrance, and her removal was smuggled into the failed impeachment-appeasement package.

Head or tail, beyond all the lousy lies and many mistakes and missed opportunities lurks a light called market forces. It is by parading the he-goat that it ends up being sold. One day, Ndiigbo are going to get the gist and vote with their considerable cash compartment that traveling through Lagos empties. I see many obstacles, but they are not insurmountable at this stage in the race. General Secretary of National Association of Aircraft and Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), and of Nigerian Aviation Safety Initiative (NASI), Captain Jerry Agbeyegbe, has not seen a JVA he didn’t hate. Presently, he is busy contesting every inch of space outside Lagos allowed other airlines -- as in the latest Virgin permit to fly to Port Harcourt. See Daily Trust of Thursday, December 5, 2002:

"These actions [additional frequencies and entry points to foreign carriers] which are being taken without due consideration for their implications [have] already made a nullity of the government’s stated policy and objective to make the Murtala Muhammed International Airport a major hub in the West African sub-region," Agbeyegbe said.

If I read ubiquitous Agbeyegbe correctly, more entry points in Nigeria minimizes the “major hub” status of MMIA? So if you want to go to Maiduguri or Bakassi, you must first land in Lagos to help make Ikeja “a major hub”? Must we come to ‘hubnob’ (mind my spelling) before leaving the country? Could this be the “they” I was told about in Enugu, the “they” on whose toes no one steps? Well, it is surely not every toe that is attached to the behind one might kiss tomorrow. If this be one of them, let the march continue; let’s shout it from the hilltops of Udi: Enugu International Airport, Emene… today, not tomorrow!

Captain Agbeyegbe was right in asking that the government “promote and protect the interest of … indigenous airlines,” but not Nigeria AirLies (Unlimited). NAL is over-protected. When Virgin Atlantic was invited to cover the London-Lagos route in a JVA, Captain Agbeyegbe and fellow travelers cried foul, as they did in the latest Air Nigeria-Airwing Aerospace JVA. Virgin went solo. The Minister herself thought that Air Nigeria would bounce back to reclaim NAL’s rightful role on the very lucrative London-Lagos route. A hundred million dollars were reportedly released at some point. NAL is past live-support status; forget “interest” protection. Whose interest? It has become a national embarrassment that one man (Branson) is making money where NAL makes misery. And, by inviting him to take a look at the Railways, Nigeria is simply bowing to Branson’s business bravado. No wonder Vice President Atiku Abubakar said early this year: “We won’t spend additional kobo again on Nigeria Airways. How can you be spending on something that is not generating fund to the Federal Government purse?” This explains in part why he is zealously pursuing the privatization of NAL, with Nasir el Rufai driving dangerously. Need we say more?

The Minister of Aviation is neither Wonder Woman nor a messiah, and Nigeria’s aviation industry is not just about Nigeria Airways or Air Nigeria. She has never been against the privatization of Nigeria Airways; she just didn’t want our collective possession sold as scrap. Yet, in trying to restore the dignity of NAL and make it commercially viable to eventual prospective investors, she has fought forces that could have blown away an average minister. These furious forces come from the inside and from the outside. The latest JVA fiasco was the final straw. No matter the commissions and omissions, it is now obvious that those who kill with the spirits are the ones out-screaming the bereaved.

At this juncture, we are at the fabled fateful forks in the rugged road tremendously traveled. Here, she needs to make a choice and take a simple stand. If they want Nigeria Airways so badly -- lock, stock, and barrel, she should let them take it and keep it. As the great Zik of Africa reminded us, history will vindicate the just. She should free herself from the web of façades and charades and do something for her immediate constituency now because, as celebrated U.S. Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, Jr. said: “All politics is local.” She should let the sneaky saboteurs sing NAL to the scrap yards of Surulere -- if they must.

Dr. Kema Chikwe is not known to shy away from taking on the mighty and the mean, and she takes her responsibilities seriously; but, at this point in the trip to the Abuja mega-mall, we must count the contents of her shopping basket. I am sure there will be loads of goodies and sweeties in her bulging basket, including the open space agreement with USA which is not fully utilized yet, the revitalization of major airports in the country, the showcase that MMIA has become, the flourishing of domestic private airlines, the maintenance of international safety standards -- including banning high-and-mighty executive ayatollahs from driving onto the tarmac, the high profile of Nigeria in International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) -- where she chairs the African caucus, taking a moral stand against backyard sale of NAL, etc. It is all good. But, to her genuine and not-for-profit well-wishers (amongst whom I number myself), the de facto internationalization of Enugu Airport -- be it for the bourgeoisies or for the hoi polloi -- will definitely define her historic tenure at Aviation. The enduring economic trickle-down effect is simply too great to pass. And that’s the bottom-line.