In October 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari pledged that the mythical creature known as ‘Nigeria Air’ would fly the skies before the end of that year.
Buhari was lying: that the so-called airline had no legal or logistical existence. It was simply guzzling money.
[At that event at which he spoke—another mythical event called the “Ministerial Performance Review Retreat”—Buhari also boasted impressive levels of military investment, including: “The Nigerian Air Force has acquired 38 brand-new aircraft and is expecting another batch of 36 new ones, while the Nigerian Navy has been equipped with new platforms, sophisticated riverine, rigid-hull inflatable, seaward defence, whaler and fast-attack boats as well as helicopters and capital ships.”
[He sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, and as if these were sophisticated equipment provided by his administration either in the preceding year, or since 2015, or better still, as if they were making a difference in the lives of Nigerians.]
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But back to Nigeria Air, which Buhari had indicated before he took office would commence with many jets in the presidential fleet, a promise which, like others, he reneged upon as he settled into a life of affluence. In a story in mid-2021, a newspaper revealed how he was squandering funds in that sector.
But it was in July 2018 that the administration launched Nigeria Air at an airshow in London. Minister of State for Aviation Hadi Sirika, waving ambition in the form of a computer-generated logo, affirmed that the airline would be operational by the end of the year with 15 leased aircraft to grow to 30 in four years.
He was referring to 2022, but it was the first salvo of lies. The airline existed only in words, and Nigeria Air did not take off—pardon the pun—in 2018. Nor in 2019. Nor in 2020. It had no required statutory approvals or certifications. It had no office or equipment. It had no structure or staff. It had nothing.
In fact, by 2022, the idea remained far more air than airline. It was simply a fever in Sirika’s head and another measure of Buhari’s duplicity.
No, the airline did not fly before the end of 2022. That left the government with five months. Sirika, desperate because of the expectations he had raised and the inexplicable funding depths he had dug, as recently as March 2023 insisted that his airline would fly within two months.
So desperate did Sirika get that he began to mistake an aircraft for an airline. On the eve of the expiration of his government, he contrived to fly one into the country in the colours of “Nigeria Air,” providing priceless comedic material for the international community to guffaw at. It was an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft repainted in the colours of Sidika’s logo to look Nigerian. One more magic by the Buhari administration: presenting one airplane as an airline of 200 million people!
Where, meanwhile, was Buhari?
He was packing, ready to leave for Daura, claiming he was leaving office as an achiever. Except that his achievements were all porous, each of them very much like Nigeria Air.
But that is not how governance is supposed to be. Which is why the Buhari administration must be fully probed, all stolen and diverted funds recovered, and guilty officials sent to jail.
Nigeria Air was a hoax from the start, a shameless endeavor made worse by the incompetence of our officials. Consider, for instance, that Uganda Airlines, which was conceived and announced at the same time as Nigeria Air in 2018, launched on schedule and has not looked back. Kenya Airways operates three direct flights to New York weekly. Ethiopian Airlines, on which Nigeria Air shamelessly tried to piggyback, has a fleet of 100 efficiently managed, aircraft. And unlike those countries, Murtala Muhammad Airport is the shame of the flying world.
As the embarrassment grows, it has now been learned that as part of the ruse, Ethiopian Airlines merely repainted one of its Boeing 737-800 to pretend that Nigeria had an aircraft. In 2023, it was a propaganda logo. Just as in 2018.
Now, will Tinubu do the right thing and probe the Buhari government for Nigeria? Is he man enough?
Speaking of men, former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai has returned from Nollywood. While there, he served as a Minister in the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo; as a blogger where he wrote patriotic-sounding articles or posted those of other writers; and as governor.
The husband of three was a passable actor in those positions, and we can assume that at home he was also decent at pretending to be someone else.
But last week, a leaked video unveiled him as a religious fundamentalist whose objective and justification in Nigeria is Muslim triumphalism.
I confess that I used to be one of those who thought highly of El-Rufai, beginning in 2003 when he publicly accused Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina of having demanded a bribe of N54 million to facilitate his ministerial nomination.
Among others: in November 2017, I warmly endorsed his gubernatorial decision to fire about 22,000 unqualified public school teachers in Kaduna. Later that year, I supported his explosive memo to President Buhari about his abominable performance. In 2020 when the governor turned 60, I celebrated it as well.
There is an indisputable element of brilliance in the former governor. The problem is that he also an egotistical, self-centred manipulator and liar. He took a tongue-lashing for this in Obasanjo’s autobiography. Another former President, Mr Goodluck Jonathan, publicly identified the same trait as well, citing several instances.
In the leaked video, El-Rufai reveals himself to be a religious bigot as he shamelessly brags about how, as governor, he deployed religion as a cudgel against Christians. He describes a plan to perpetuate Muslim rule in Kaduna but breathes not one word about how his Muslim manipulation made his state safer. Has it reduced poverty among Nigerian Muslims or made education more accessible?
Remember, this is the same man who, for two decades, pretended to be a man of principle. That Nollywood movie seems to have ended. A masquerade no more.
But we must also remember that recently, the then APC presidential candidate Bola Tinubu begged El-Rufai not to travel abroad for studies, praising his ability “in turning a rotten situation into a bad one.”
That time may have arrived, which means one of two things will now happen. Perhaps Tinubu will appoint El-Rufai to high office to help boost Nigeria’s stench levels.
Or the former governor can insist on further studies. In that case, however, imagine just how embarrassing it would be to learn that he has chosen as his destination an “unjust” country where Christians are either in the majority or other religions are respected! What would be the point of learning from infidels, or drinking of their water or ogling their women?
To Nasir then, I recommend Afghanistan. Once there, he can discard the mask and grow a large beard. And whatever he lacks in self-esteem he can nurture in shortsighted righteousness, his hypocrisy now internationally and permanently established.
This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials.
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- @Sonala.Olumhense
