Anger is the word Each time one ventures out of Nigeria, it arouses ones emotion- anger. But the truth is that anytime I am outside Nigeria I perennially want to return home proving as true, the saying that East or West, home is the best. I often quote a Moroccan traveller, who, after the tour of Europe, exclaimed on returning to Morocco thus: What a comfort to be back to civilization. This is one of the dangers of provincialism. In my last trip to the UK and the USA, I posted pictures of the toilets in their airports and submitted that I did so because the cleanliness of rest rooms tell us how neat other places are. I concluded that one could safely eat or sleep in those rest rooms. A lot of people misunderstood me. Some asked what my boss did as the Governor of Anambra State. I can shout it from the rooftops that what Obi did and the Billions of Naira he left in the coffers, renew our hope that with purposeful leadership, Nigeria is not beyond redemption. In that post, I off course acknowledged the fact that under President Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR, our airports are better than they used to be. But if you ask me, I will suggest we face infrastructural challenges more than erecting imposing edifices. Are our conveyor belts working? Are our electronic staircases functional? Can I eat in the rest rooms in our airports? What of the ubiquitous presence of all manner of security, does it mean our scanners are not working? Why must the roof of the airports leak? Why are the walkways to board the planes looking like the ones used by Adam? Is the terrible traffic to the Murtala Muhammed Airport beyond redemption? These and many more are necessary questions anybody interested in our airports should begin with. During that trip, I met the Minister of Aviation, Chief Osita Chidoka in the USA. I discussed the airport with him and told him how little things, functional basic facilities, would make a difference. I think it was St. Theresa of the Child Jesus that said that virtue is constituted in doing little things in an extraordinary ways. Surprisingly, the Minister brought out his phone and showed me pictures of functional facilities he took at those airports and the text he already sent to those in charge at home on the need to replicate them in our airports. I was very happy at least in understanding that he is conscious of things that are needed to be done. In fact, his words: Val, all of us travel. We pass through the airports of other countries and nobody will tell you that he does not feel the pangs of what you are telling me now. Re- assuring! He did not have to talk like some people whose defence have always been: Nigeria is young compared to those countries, we shall one day be like them, as if the law of infrastructural development sanctions re-inventing the wheels. Rather than see what I posted as borne out of my desire to see a better Nigeria, some I curable bad critics descended on me, seeking to burn me in the cauldron of their inks. They should know by now, as one of the Bonapartes said, that the sound of the cannons were not new to the Bonapartes. I was inspired to post this from OR-Thambo International airport, Johannesburg, which is as neat and well managed as airports in other climes. One of the lessons we have to learn as a country is that in the systolic and diastolic movement of history and civilization, if a Nation lacks behind due to error of omission, civilization will leave that nation behind. May this not be our fate in Nigeria! Again, see the pic of one of the rest rooms in the airport.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:45:44 +0000