Grounding Of Governors’ Aircraft: New Battle In Town? By Ernest - TopicsExpress



          

Grounding Of Governors’ Aircraft: New Battle In Town? By Ernest Omoarelojie 06/11/2013 For even the most cursory observer of the country’s recent political development, Friday, June 7, 2013, will go down as another day of infamy. About mid-afternoon, news filtered in that the aircraft on which Edo state governor, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, was billed to travel to Awka, the Anambra state capital for the burial ceremony of the late wife of Senator Ben Obi, a senior aide to President Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan, has been grounded. According to the information, the helicopter, flown by a Filipino pilot who has been hired severally by the governor for emergency trips, was ordered by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, to return midway into the flight with a stern warning that if he proceeded beyond where he received his order to divert his craft, the chopper would be grounded permanently. Not sure of what was amiss the stunned pilot made his way back, dropped the bewildered governor and headed straight to the airport where he was told he failed to comply with aviation regulation of producing his manifest, paying landing fees, etc. Against his routine of making all payments after the completion of his task as he has done on the many occasions he came to Benin City, he made the payment formalities which he completed in less than ten minutes. But for reasons that were not made clear, he was detained at the airport for more than one hour, forcing the governor to cancel the trip. NAMA, initially reticent with an “I don’t have anything to say to you on the matter,” a careful catch-phrase put forward to avoid pre-empting a more carefully worded politically acceptable refrain, suddenly found its mouth a few days later. Through Nnamdi Udoh, its managing director, the agency pointed out that it aborted Oshiomhole’s journey because of the chopper pilot’s inability to file a flight plan, including the submission of manifest. Supo Atobatele, the agency’s General Manager, public affairs, also attempted to disabuse the mind of observers over the motivation behind the fiasco. But he did so with a trite catch that makes it clear that high handed political directives from above may indeed be the real issues at stake, just as it was over the Amaechi aircraft saga. “We want to be emphatic with our declaration this afternoon that the safety and security related issues raised by our men on Friday at Benin airport are about the flight plan and passenger manifest. It has no political undertone at all but purely an aviation matter bordering on rules and regulations. Basically, as a matter of rules, we needed to know where the aircraft was going and how many people were on board.” For the sake of argument, let us assume that the drama was not politically motivated or that the demands enumerated by NAMA are in line with global aviation conduct, irrevocably sine qua non to initiating any flight. In doing so, one would expect that the agency would insist on sorting them out the same time the pilot was granted permission to land in Benin. Why then did the agency wait for flight to progress with the governor on board if the motive is not to embarrass the government and people of Edo state? Some of us are familiar with trends in the transport sector. For instance, the practice is that every taxi operator must pay a certain amount to regulation agencies every operation day. Sometimes however, some operators may plead for time as they have not made much for them to pay immediately. Common sense would suggest that such waiver be granted particularly as there is no proof of past defaults. Would the country’s aviation industry collapse if the pilot was allowed to pay after the flight which he explained, was the way he did it time and again until the botched flight to Awka? The last I checked, the federal government insisted that the driving force behind its insistence on the enforcement of all aviation regulations to the letter is the need for safety on the country’s airspace. Curiously, one may at this point ask the question of how the failure of the OAS pilot to pay landing fee became an immediate threat to safety rules. The question is particularly relevant given the pilot made it clear that he has been in the state severally to fly the governor and that on each occasion he completed his assignment for the day before making the payments. Would one really blame him therefore for aligning himself with a subsisting mutually acceptable understanding? Amazingly, he was ordered back with a caveat that if he flew further than where he received the message, his craft would be grounded permanently. Assuming that there is no ulterior motive, it is indeed a very curious order by any stretch of the imagination. Promptly, the pilot obeyed the order and brought the governor back to the office before heading to the airport where, within ten minutes, he completed the payment formalities. Curiously, he was not allowed to leave the airport in order to proceed on the journey until well over one hour, by which –time the governor decided against continuing with the journey. The absurdity of the whole drama no doubt has a precedent. Not too long ago, an aircraft belonging to Rivers state was detained and grounded in Akure under the same circumstances. The order was executed on a day the governor, Rotimi Amaechi visited the home state of Segun Mimiko, one of the major co-conspirators against his NGF chairmanship ambition. Incidentally, Oshiomhole’s craft suffered the same fate on a day he was billed to make an important journey to state capital of Peter Obi’s state, another major anti Amaechi protagonists. The difference between the Akure debacle and this incident is that unwittingly, the action is more like that of a blockhead in an African axiom who threw stones into a market in full swing unaware that one of his relations would be hit. Ironically, the conspiracy happens to be against the interest of Senator Obi, an aide of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose agents are generally fingered to be Jacobs wearing Esau’s hairy arms. From all indication, the development appears to be in line with the desire by the anti Amaechi forces to add more casualties to their collateral resume by dealing with those perceived as the River state governor’s allies who failed to kow-tow the directives of the president over the governor forum’s unfolding debacle. Unabashedly, they are throwing everything they have in the ring with a view to sending the message that with federal support at their disposal, they will stop at nothing to drive home the point that all opposed to their game plan will be crushed. So far, two governors, already primed for a potentially embarrassing exit from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, have been hastened (one suspended over the very flimsy excuse that he did not take the party chairman’s call) out with a pre emptive suspension. Indications are rife that the party hierarchy is in a hurry to identify others with the same intention with the announcement earlier that more governors under the battered umbrella may be visited with the same fate sooner than later. The hammer on Oshiomhole’s craft is an attempt to send the message to even those in the opposition that they must contend with federal might for aligning with an enemy of the ruling party, its agents, including His Excellency, Lord Emperor. If the dynamics of power show must be explained, the victimization and intimidation obviously meant to whip into line certain people perceived to have different views from the president and his agents particularly on his 2015 second term ambition, may end up with a different outcome altogether. Times without number, the presidency has publicly dissociated itself severally from the vendetta against Amaechi and those perceived to be his allies. Indeed, some observers have tendered arguments in support of this position. Assuming however, that it is true, allowing the harassment of the elected chairman of the NGF and his supporters to continue would give the impression that the claim is not only false but also that the presidency has lost its capacity to rein in its agents provocateurs. In the likelihood that the latter scenario is true, Nigerians may have more reasons to worry besides the seemingly intractable security situation in the country. One of the reasons would be that the president is an unconscious pawn in the hands of power brokers within his party, who may be engineering a deceptively grand scheme in which Jonathan himself may turn out the ultimate loser. The likelihood of the scenario above appears very real, particularly now that the anti-Amaechi forces have not only shown a willingness to wash their dirty linen publicly but are equally ready to court international embarrassment. That is if the reaction of the pilot is anything to go by, following the (beyond-aviation-safety) threat to ground his plane if he dared to move further than he did or even ask why he was so bullied into cutting short his flight midway. The hapless pilot reacted thus: “I was even threatened that after payment that the aircraft will be grounded completely if I argued with them. I have flown for 35 years, seven of which I spent in Nigeria and this is the first time I am encountering a situation like this. I don’t know what problem they have with the governor…” It would be recalled that following the uproar generated by the saga involving the grounding of Amaechi’s aircraft in Akure, the House of Representatives committee which investigated the matter exonerated the Rivers state governor from all the accusations leveled against him. The house went further to advice the Attorney General and minister of Justice to institute a suit against Caverton for deceiving Nigerians into holding the impression that the governor erred in the process leading to his acquisition of the aircraft and or subsequent operation in the country. Up till now, nothing has come out in the form of a suit from the Attorney General. What that tends to suggest is that the whole uproar leading up to the grounding of the aircraft was tacitly engineered by the federal government through its agents. The same indicators appear to be obvious in the similar, saga in Benin City involving Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole NAMA would need to do more than it has done so far to remove the indicators which seem to suggest that it is carrying out the instructions of an emerging, intolerant emperor.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:31:45 +0000

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