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October 22nd Crash--A Sober Reflection By Umar Bello
The crash of Oct 22nd has necessitated a sober reflection regarding our whole security as a nation. Are we at all secure?
The crash site was only known more than twenty four hours after the crash and this was by dint of the efforts of the farming community at the site who informed a third part who in turn informed the AIT. The rescue mission who were already stretching their necks searching for the unfortunate flight in the woods of Abeokuta were only astonished to realize that it was just within Lagos vicinity! Rumor that emanated from only God-knows-where had already made the rounds that the flight had been rescued in Kishi with some survivors. Based on this unfounded rumor, the rescue team plunged into a futile search. A minister was even at the house of the late Waziri reassuring the family that the plane had been rescued at Kishi. While a discerning nation could have deployed the use of the greatest high-tech to find out about such crucial incidence ours depends on a rumor-mill and the strenth of the human eye. If those villagers had not mad e the effort to report, or if at all there was no village, the team could have plunged across the Niger in their 'search' using the 'human eye' The rumor-mill will then churn more salacious and sizzling stories. The plane had simply smoked away into a Genie's bottle; not an impossible lie in a Nigeria where tractors and juggernauts can vanish into the thin air. The Satellite that we launched with great enthusiasm has not been of any help in this regard, and the the irony is that Britain's DMC picked the site later not Nigeria's. If the crash had some survivors they could just have been killed from their injuries since there wasn't any emergency action in place. Even in this case nobody would totally discount the fact that there might be some survivors who immediately survived the crash but later succumbed to the helpless condition. We are truly a nation not prepared for anything and human lives are not worthier than term ites' We could be under an invasion and even be routed without the knowledge of our security apparatus. A nation that can not detect a fallen fallen 20 kilometers away from where it took off obviously can not detect any enemy weapons in case of a war given today's sophisticated military hardware. Our borders are as porous as the air and weapons could be concealed and brought in under the noses of our naira-besotted custom officials.
More exasperating is the fact that a week after the crash the flight has yet to be unearthed. We are still waiting for experts from abroad to perform the task because we are totally lacking in the equipment to carry out such task. This is preposterous! Lets imagine that we had an earthquake where houses were buried (may Allah protect us) or some of the ecological disasters happening in the world today, then we could have had to simply sit waiting for experts to come at their time before anything could be done to save lives! That plane that remains buried in the earth for a week now is a great symbol of the ineptitude of our collective leadership and the indictment of our whole security apparatus. If a nation can not unearth a plane in the 21st century then it could as well be belonging to the Medieval era. The earthing of that plane remains both the literal and figurative burial of our sort of technology. One would have goose-p imples to imagine what would happen should we be assailed by some disasters. Our safety is simply by Divine providence and not by any precautionary measure from the government. Our shameless president had the audacity to lay wreaths at the site while the plane and the black box are still deep in the earth! That laying of wreaths was the crowning of his travesty of leadership.
If one sees how governments in the worlds are taking measures to safeguard their citizens he would certainly feel that Nigeria is just another version of hell. The victims of the plane crash are simply strewn in that plane waiting for eternity to be buried in their final and right abodes. Moslems that deserve to be immediately interred are all there biding time. What sort of country is this?
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