Since leaving office in 1999, whenever former South African President Nelson Mandela is hospitalized, South Africans would pray for his quick recovery. Earlier this year, as Mandela lay critically ill in the hospital, battling a lung infection, he united his rainbow nation without even uttering a word. And the world was captivated by how Mandela’s people kept vigil outside of his hospital, pleading with God to have mercy on the 95-year-old anti-apartheid hero. At special church services dedicated to him across South Africa, people fasted and prayed to God to spare the life of their beloved Tata Madiba. The outpouring of love Mandela enjoys from his people has to do with the selfless service he has rendered them.
Nigerians do not love their leaders the way South Africans love Mandela. This is not because Nigerians are incapable of showing love. Rather, it has everything to do with Luke 6: 38: “The measure you give is the measure you receive.” Nigerian leaders are self-serving and do not care about their people. In return, Nigerians have refused to trust and love them.
As soon as news filtered on October. 3, that the Associated Airline plane ferrying the corpse of former Ondo State Governor.Olusegun Agagu from Lagos to Akure had crashed, Nigerians took to social media, particularly Facebook, to dissect the accident, seeing it as an opportunity to vent their frustrations and anger over the entrenched leadership of authority-stealing in their country.
Gbolahan Kolawole’s post particularly stood out. He used it to remind Nigerians that before becoming governor, Agagu served as the nation’s Aviation Minister in the Obasanjo administration. “Under Agagu’s watch, the aviation sector in Nigeria became a deathtrap and a nightmare for many travelers,” Kolawole wrote. “Mr. Agagu did nothing to revive or help the sector, but he helped his pocket. As a result, his body “re-died” a day before his internment.”
Kolawole added that the plane crash reminded him of former military governor of Oyo State, Abdulkareem Adisa, who later became maximum dictator Ibrahim Babangida’s Minister of Works and Housing.
“Although he was from Ilorin, Adisa refused to fix the Ibadan-Ilorin Road,” he wrote. “Few years later, he died in an accident on the same road. I hope all those imbeciles ruling Nigeria know that life and death can also be a metaphor.”
Kolawole has a warning and an admonition for Nigerian leaders: “Corruption has a way of fighting back when you least expect it. Fix Nigeria. You will not only fix your family in the process, but your future, and your future final resting place. I hope all those bastards at the helm of Nigerian affairs are reading this because your time would soon come. It is called karma. We the Nigeria youth are ready for you this time as God is with us.”
Femi Fani-Kayode, another Nigerian former Minister of Aviation, was so enraged by the Agagu bashing on Facebook that he came out swinging in his usual diatribe of reality distortion. “The shameful refrain, which is all over the social media, is that Agagu somehow deserved to die a “second death” from the skies because so many people had supposedly been killed in plane crashes under his watch as Minister of Aviation,” Fani-Kayode wrote. “I find it nauseating and distasteful. Only God knows how each of us will come to our end.”
Then Fani-Kayode began doing what he does best: blackmailing other people with obfuscation of facts, while presenting himself as holier-than-thou.He blamed the recent air mishaps in Nigeria on the incompetence of Stella Oduah, current minister of aviation, and questioned why she’s yet to be fired from her job or redeployed. “Under her watch, close to 200 souls have been killed in air crashes in the last two years alone,” Fani-Kayode added.
He bragged that under his own watch, as aviation minister, Nigeria recorded no air crash, whether it be passenger plane, private jet, helicopter or light aircraft. “I am the only minister of aviation in Nigeria between 2002 to date who can lay claim to that. I put it down to hard work, prayer and the grace of God and nothing else.”
But Fani-Kayode’s claims are false. Fani-Kayode became Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation on November. 2, 2006. A week later, November. 10, to be precise, an OAS service helicopter crashed in Warri, killing four people on board. And Fani-Kayode did not resign from his job. He was not fired by President Obasanjo either. It is worth noting that he was aviation minister for only six months – November 2006 to May 2007, during which he was alleged to have stolen N19 billion. Even at that, the first air crash in Nigeria after Oduah became minister, July 4, 2011, occurred on March 14, 2012, when a helicopter conveying four senior police officers crashed in Jos. That was eight months after she assumed office. Isn’t eight months better than Fani-Kayode’s six months?
Sounding more like Fani-Kayode than choosing her words carefully, Oduah told State House correspondents, October. 7, that the October. 3 air crash in Lagos was an “inevitable act of God.” Inevitable? Act of God? Really?
This whole mentality of God-is-a-harbinger-of-good-and-bad things prompted Sabella Abidde, one of Nigeria’s finest writers, to query: “What manner of God is this? He must not be all-loving and all-caring and all-knowing. What should those who perished say to Him? And how should their friends and families feel towards Him?” May the souls of victims of October. 3 plane crash rest in perfect peace!