Which president approved the renaming of 15 airports remains in the realm of conjecture.
On May 29, the day of the inauguration of President Bola Tinubu, many news outlets, including the Daily Trust newspaper, carried the news item that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the renaming of 15 airports. A few weeks after, the same item reappeared giving the credit to President Bola Tinubu as the approving authority.
The same matter of having the stamp of both the outgoing and the incoming president, all within a few days, is yet to be sorted out. It is even more curious that both approvals emanated, one after the other, from the Ministry of Aviation, which is yet to explain the reason for this befuddling occurrence.
I guess, it is left to us to speculate. It is obvious that the list had been drawn during the last days of the Buhari administration but when it became apparent that accusations of self-service could be thrown at them for including the name of the outgoing president, they tarried awhile. It is purely speculative, but I guess the newly inaugurated president was railroaded to carry the can, to recuse former President Buhari for performing a self-serving act by renaming Maiduguri Airport after his good self.
An immediate perusal of the renamed airports reveals that the act of naming some of the airports after some departed citizens was spot on. I particularly applaud renaming Ibadan Airport after S. L. Akintola who was killed by renegade soldiers during the January 1966 coup. I believe that is one nationalist that has not received his just reward for his broad-mindedness to work hard to align the West and the North during the politics of that turbulent period of the First Republic.
For other reasons, the applause also goes to the renaming of Ilorin Airport after Tunde Idiagbon, Benin Airport after Oba Akenzua, and Ebonyi Airport after Chuba Okadigbo to mention a few.
However, some of the renamed airports could expect hostile reception by the communities where these airports are situated. Already, many of the comments abound in the media space on the renamed Port Harcourt and Nasarawa Airports are downright belligerent and hostile.
There were angry reactions in the media space rejecting the renaming of Port Harcourt airport after Chief Obafemi Awolowo, alluding to the fact that he bore no direct relevance to the community surrounding the airport. In particular, the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), the apex socio-cultural body of the Niger Delta citizens had been vociferous in condemning the renaming of the Port Harcourt Airport after Awolowo.
In an interview with the ICIR, the PANDEF spokesperson, Ken Robinson, while acknowledging Awolowo’s contributions to the country, particularly to the South West, noted that renaming the airport after him was an insult to the Niger Delta, the South South, and particularly the people of Rivers State. “It is inappropriate and misplaced,” Robinson was quoted to have said. “It is insulting to the people of not only Rivers State but also to the people of the South South. Awolowo, with due respect to his personality and contribution to the South West, has no relationship and correlation to the people of the Niger Delta, South South and Rivers State.
“Why should we have people from Rivers State, Niger Delta and South South who had attained high national and global recognitions and then you ignored them and name the Port Harcourt airport after Awolowo? It is most unfortunate.”
The renaming of Nasarawa Airport after Usman Danfodio has drawn an even angrier reaction for the fact that the revered sheikh had little or no relationship to that part of the middle belt of the country. Sheikh Usman Danfodio has the Sokoto University named after him which fits his memory as a great scholar who made Sokoto town the capital of his caliphate. Similarly, the University of Ife had also been named after Chief Obafemi Awolowo when he died in 1987. It is needless dragging the names of these great men into these unwholesome controversies.
It is in the same vein that I look at renaming Maiduguri airport after former President Muhammadu Buhari. It is rather hurried for a president to name himself after a national edifice. The jury is still out there assessing the legacy of the former president. Many would hold him in high esteem as a performing leader while others would pass judgement on him as a do-nothing president. It is only time that will tell. But why Maiduguri airport? Perhaps those who drew up the list had a notion that former President Buhari had some attachment to Maiduguri. True, he was appointed military governor of the northeastern state in 1975 after General Yakubu Gowon was overthrown. At that time, Maiduguri was the capital of the entire northeastern state. However, his stay in Maiduguri was brief, for barely seven or so months. When Borno State was created in the following year he left for Lagos to take on the post of Minister of Petroleum.
As for his tenure as president and how it affected Maiduguri, we have to await a more deep and proper assessment. This is especially so as the Boko Haram insurgency is still an unfinished affair.
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