As the last three survivors of Nigeria’s latest bloody aviation disaster struggled to cling to life on Monday, the bereaved city of Port Harcourt asked why an elderly aircraft could be allowed to spill so much young blood.
Rows of well-scrubbed faces smiled out from the front page of the daily paper, school pictures of members of a 71-strong party that was torn up and burnt to death on Saturday when an ageing Sosoliso Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 ploughed into the city airport’s runway.
Young achievers from one of the country’s most prestigious schools, the Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, they had been returning to proud families in well-kept homes like that of Egwele Uzo on the leafy avenues of Port Harcourt’s ”Government Reserved Area”.
”Uzo was such a little nice girl. Her mother has gone to the military hospital to see if she can recover her body,” said her 24-year-old neighbour Igey Arugbu. ”The sad thing is that the father of the girl is not in the country. It is only her mother that is bearing the grief.”
All 71 of the children were killed in the accident, along with 36 more passengers and crew.
In Port Harcourt’s overworked hospitals, Red Cross volunteers were angry that they were once more having to deal with the human wreckage generated by Nigeria’s rough-and-ready aviation industry — a sector that has killed 1 021 people in the past 15 years.
”It’s just a shame that we cannot clear the mess in the industry. The government should compel most of the private airlines to merge to improve on their services,” said the Red Cross’s Dickson Alame, as he helped out at the morgue in the city’s military hospital.
”We had 35 bodies initially, but now there are less than 10. Some corpses have been claimed. Once you have proof of identification, your bodies will be released to you,” he told relatives who had come to hear the worst. ”It is indeed sad that we have lost yet another generation of future leaders. More than 70 children of the same school perished. This obviously is an avoidable accident.”
Alame’s anger has been matched at the highest levels of the Nigerian government.
Less than two months ago, when another Nigerian commercial airliner had just plunged suddenly and inexplicably to Earth and killed 117 people, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced measures to ”sanitise” the air industry and clamp down on corruption and lax standards.
Following Saturday’s crash, the government is at last moving into gear.
Last month, the president accused the leaders of the industry and its safety agencies of giving and taking bribes. Now he has summoned them all for an emergency meeting and a dressing-down, on Tuesday, at the headquarters of the federal government in Abuja.
Meanwhile, the only three travellers to survive the crash lie swathed in bandages in two Port Harcourt clinics.
Priscilla Aligbe is being treated at Port Harcourt University Teaching hospital.
At 24, she is a few years older than the Catholic youngsters killed alongside her on the flight, but like them she represents hope for Nigeria’s future.
Having recently qualified as a doctor, she was serving on attachment with the police force as part of her mandatory year of national service. She was a popular figure at the police barracks, treating officers for the malaria that haunts workers in the Niger Delta swamps.
But now, with severe burns across much of her body, it is she who needs treatment.
”We should all pray for her speedy recovery,” said a nurse.
In a nearby clinic run by the oil giant Shell, two more young women face different fates.
”We shall try our best for them. Of the two here, one is in a very bad shape. The other patient was lucky. She suffered minor injuries. She will soon be discharged,” a doctor said, confirming that this second patient might yet be Sosoliso flight 1145’s only survivor. — Sapa-AFP