Black Sunday

Today makes it exactly a month since the nation was thrown into a state of mourning. June 3rd, 2012 will forever be remembered by many Nigerians as the day they lost a loved one. In Northern Nigerian, Boko Haram struck in Tudun Yelwa, Bauchi State and in the South, Dana Air MD-83 aircraft crashed into a residential area in Iju-ishaga (Agege), Lagos. In one day, the nation lost over 200 lives due to preventable circumstances.

The death streak began at 9:15am when a suicide bomber tried to drive past a security checkpoint into Harvest Field Pentecostal Church which happens to be situated between two other churches, Living Faith Church (aka Winners Chapel) and Deeper Life. According to the Bauchi state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan, rumours of an attack on churches in that area had been received, hence the police set up check points close to the churches. The checkpoint helped to restrict the bomber’s direct access to the churches, thereby forcing him to ram his Honda car into the security gate where his explosives detonated causing the collapse of the wall of Harvest Field church and the deaths of members of Living Faith Church who were just closing from the first service and heading home. The Bauchi Chairman of CAN, Rev Lawi Pokti has claimed that 8 people were killed when the military came to protect the peace after the blast. In all, about 16 people (including the bomber) were killed and 61 persons were injured by the attack as stated by the the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, Dr. Mohammed Alkali.

While we struggled to comprehend the reason for such a vicious attack on Christians the North, death was closer South than we thought. At about 3:30pm, eye witnesses say the aircraft was seen flying low and making some noises before its belly hit a church, a two-storey building, a printing press and a woodwork studio. The aircraft which was headed to Lagos from Abuja, was said to have issued a May Day call stating its engines had failed at 11miles from Lagos after the plane caught fire just before it disappeared off the scope of the Lagos Air Traffic Control and lost communication with the control tower, according to Nigerian Aviation News website. The distressed plane took down 153 passengers and crew including the American pilot that was aided by an Indian co-pilot and an Indonesian flight engineer. While on ground, about 40 persons’ lives were also cut short unexpectedly by the crash. Blackberry broadcast carrying the names of victims on the flight, sent even those who had no idea they knew someone on the flight into fits of tears as the tragedy was brought closer home.

Over the next few days, pain turned to rage as people sought who to blame for the tragedies. One of the rumours that circulated social media involved the information that a dignitary’s arrival at Lagos airport was responsible for why the plane could not land at the airstrip as at when due (http://www.nigeriafilms.com/news/17686/34/i-didnt-cause-dana-air-crash-presidents-wife-patie.html). Another information dispersed through social media was the history of the American-built aircraft and its numerous maintenance challenges which should have deemed it unfit to fly within the Nigerian airspace in the first place. While accusations, that the proximity of the police checkpoints to the church, filled the newspapers as the reason for effective attack on the churches in Bauchi. The Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority felt the blow the hardest as issues of unresolved inquisition into Bellview Boeing 737 airliner crash in 2005 resurfaced. It seemed despite the efforts made by both the Police and the Aviation ministry; tragedy was destined to strike that fateful day. Could anything have been done better to prevent those incidences from ever occurring again?

Prior to this occurrence, Nigeria had been granted top air-safety ratings known as Category 1 by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration because of its strides in aviation safety which included revoking the certifications for all airlines and allowing new airlines to take flight under increased scrutiny by a newly formed civilian aviation body. Apparently not enough had been done aggressively to take aging aircraft out of our airspace. This begs the question, what are our aviation regulatory bodies really doing? This is the 10th plane crash in Nigeria since 1992, do we always have to wait for a plan to crash before more is done to improve our aviation industry like decisively monitoring the state of airplanes allowed to fly in our airspace? In that fateful week, I too felt the loss experienced by most as a friend of mine died in a car accident along the Benin-Agbor road when her vehicle ran into a stationary broken down tanker parked along a winding road. These tragedies could have been avoided if monitoring and regulatory bodies did their jobs well.

Now the Nigerian people are left with what ifs. If only the high airfare paid by travellers were invested more into the maintenance of the air crafts and not into taxes paid to the government who are not doing their jobs effectively. If only the government took a more aggressive approach in curbing the menace of Boko Haram rather than telling us ‘...we are doing all we can...’. Even the US government believes the solution to the Boko Haram attacks involves a broad-based strategy that includes addressing national security as well as being involved in community development to eradicate poverty which feed the underlying grievances that promote acts of violence in the nation. The upside in all this was that for once, both north and south were one even in grief. For now, we can only pray that we never have to face such a terrible national loss again.