According to news report of the new aviation measures from the United States:
“All travellers to the US will be affected and not just travellers from Nigeria and 13 other countries that were short listed by the US last January as either “sponsors of state terrorism” or “countries of interest”.
Travellers from the 14 will no longer automatically face extra security screening before they fly to the US, Reuters said yesterday.
Announcing the new measures yesterday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, said the Transportation Security Administration will begin the new enhanced security measures for all air carriers with international flights to the US.
The new terror-screening strategy is as a result of a review ordered by President Barack Obama.
Michael Dickson, the man in the picture, holds some explosives he had tried to smuggle aboard a jetliner in Nigeria. Somehow, his plot was foiled…by sheer luck!
While the reports carried by various Nigerian mainstream media suggest that the explosives were meant to be detonated once the airliner was airborne; there is very little in the reports to support this assertion. Were the explosives rigged to explode mid-air? Was there an attached  detonator?
This man is most likely nothing more than ”a mule”, so it becomes imperative that security agencies unravel the motive behind the explosives, as daunting as this may be. Â
Whatever the motives are, however, some lives were saved by the discovery. My hunch is that the explosives would have be used to cause some havoc before or during the 2007 elections. Â
Will the Nigerian airline operators conform with the “no exception” search mandate given by the aviation boss? If this incident does not, I wonder what will!
“It was the pilot’s fault“, says Nigerian Aviation Minister less than 48 hours after the recent airliner crash in Nigeria. Just days earlier, the nation marked the one year remembrance of the victims of a jetliner crash, the first in the series of four air crash fatalities in the past 12 months.
Whatever convincing evidence the Minister had to prompt him to make this call; it was definitely a hasty call that really didn’t bear much difference from that made by the pilot of the ill-fated flight (if indeed he was warned of the bad weather).
The standard procedure is to refrain from making categorical statements until proper investigations have been conducted. If the chief aviation officer for Nigeria is not aware of this standard aviation protocol, then is it still a surprise that Nigerian airliners have turned into flying coffins?
After seeing the tragically grotesque smoldering wrecks of four crashed airplanes, with the mangled bodies of their occupants, it is far becoming too familiar a sight, and grossly embarrassing. So if the Minister has nothing intelligent to say, he should keep his mouth zipped. In fact going by trend of events in his ministry over the last 12 months, his utternances have stopped being meaningful, if they ever were.
After unprecedented four aviation crashes in 12 months; shouldn’t the aviation minister just quit and go home? He has nothing else and left to prove. He definitely has some bad karma working against him. Afterall his name is “Aborishade”, mabe he needs to make peace with the ‘Orisha’ (deity) that surrounds with. May his record remain undisputed!
Why should reforms be limited to the Nigerian aviation industry and not all sectors of transportation? (In fact Nigeria need a wide-scale reform). In this era, no form of transportation exists in total isolation; they are all are inter-connected somewhat and somehow.
Following the latest airliner crash in this country, many had called for aviation reforms and it appears the Nigerian government has heed these calls by grounding two airlines. As appropriate as this action may seem, to me, it may just be another example of the government playing to the gallery.
Any meaningful and long lasting reform should be well grounded in sound logic and economics,and economics by the way, is hardly ever unidirectional, but systemic and multi-faceted. It is only logical that Nigeria needs to adopt a systemic approach to dealing with its issues and problems.
The majority of Nigerians travel by land, it is my guess that the death rate is higher in road than air traffic accidents. I also guess that the total costs and burden of road traffic-related accidents surpass those related to air traffic. These will include, but not limited to, healthcare and economic costs, and the years of potential lives lost. So, why not extend the reforms to road management?
The other areas that deserve attention are the railway lines and sea/waterways, these have have been ignored for decades. These are crucial forms of transportation and will serve as catalysts to Nigeria’s economic and industrial growth.
Tags: Nigeria Reforms
There is tragedy in the land again; I write this blog posting with a heavy and saddened heart. Once again, Nigeria, my home country, is under a heavy cloud of sorrow and anguish following another airliner crash at Port harcourt, a city in south east Nigeria. The plane crashed, according to news report while attempting to land at the city’s airport on Saturday December 10, 2005. At least 101 souls perished in the crash. some of the casualties were some 50 children, between ages 10 and 16, returning home for the Christmas holidays.
Many families are still grieving following the 117 lives lost in an earlier airliner crash on October 23 of this year, then this happened. It is grief-time all over again.
The incessant and unnecessary loss of lives in Nigeria is nothing but appalling. This is a nation where thousands die each year from preventable causes like poor access to health care, and traffic accidents such as these airliner crashes. Just as it is with land travel in Nigeria, the aviation facilities and airliners in use are poorly serviced, or too old to be put to any save use.
Some disasters are simply unpreventable, in Nigeria there appears to be one common factor to all these incidents- a corrupt and redundant bureaucracy. Corruption breeds redunancy and ineptitude in the system, and it is responsible for the moribund, decayed and disinvested national infrastructures. It has overwhelmed the education, health, and power sectors, now it seems it has seized the aviation industry in a deadly hug. As the Nigeria mourns once again and prepares to bury the dead, how many more will die before the nation is rid of this canker worm?
Tags: Nigeria Aviation