On practically daily basis, we go through experiences, either collectively or individually. Some of the experiences are harrowing and saddening; just a few are uplifting and joyous. What with hundreds of thousands, nay, millions in hospitals around the world. Many a man is at the theatre of war—yes, armed to the teeth and confident of his overwhelming power through the instrumentality of his arsenals to subdue the enemy and perhaps by extension, the sting of death. And feeling on top of the world, he calls out triumphantly, Death where is thy sting? We have approached science to bring out from its rich store answers to the perplexities of life and daily living. Despite its wonders, mankind has found that science has not been able to cross over certain frontiers, nor has technology its handmaiden been able to transcend the limits of time and space, for example. A great many then come to the conclusion that the ways of the Almighty Creator are inscrutable. But are they? Certainly not. The Most High is logic personified and Light. And logic does not permit of inscrutability nor does light permit of shades and darkness. Above all it is the wish of the Creator that He be understood. This is subject for another day. For many, life goes beyond bread and butter. Certain events shake us to the depth of our souls, compelling introspection.
I recall this report published in August last year by TheNewsGuru digital newspaper. The pilot of an ill-fated helicopter was locked up in a bag. He tried to get out of it in a manner suggesting he was practising how he would eject himself from his aircraft in the event it was losing height and was crash bound. Captain Chika Prudence Ernest was purportedly playing with his colleagues as if he knew it was his last. It was indeed his last as it was for his co-pilot, Clement Ndiok. Their helicopter crashed the following day. A passenger on the flight with them died at Lagos University Teaching Hospital. His experience is what we all call premonition, a warning by his helper in the Beyond to take precaution over what lay on his path the following day.
Last Friday, the nation was thrown into deep mourning following the death of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 other service men, three of them senior officers of the rank of Brig.-General, two Majors, and five Air Force officers. The Nigeria Air Force aircraft in which they were flying crashed shortly after take-off at Kaduna Airport. I am refraining from dwelling on the air disaster as such in the realization that it is fresh and it shook the land. It threw the country into a shock. It is also in the recognition that the relations of the departed need every support they can garner to regain their strength and confidence. One of the Air Force officers married only two months ago.
It is pertinent to note, however, that within six months, five plane crashes had occurred, including one in Switzerland only yesterday. These are enough to send cold shivers down anybody’s spine. Three occurred in Nigeria, the first in February, involving a Nigerian Air Force helicopter, killing all seven officers on board. On 31 March an Alpha-Jet aircraft engaged in anti-terror war against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) lost contact with the radar. The flight has still not been found till this day. Two officers were on board the jet fighter. In January, four Brazilian footballers and the president of their club died in a plane crash on their way to play a regional cup match in the city of Goiania. The pilot in the Swiss crash of yesterday succeeded in ejecting himself and landed unhurt.
It can be frightening to picture an aircraft with passengers going down. It is crushing enough when during flights an airplane runs into occasional turbulence and it suddenly loses altitude how much more when it plunges its passengers into the ocean. I can recall plane crashes which occurred in rapid succession in 1992 in some parts of the world including Nigeria. Recalling them could be chilling, greatly troubling. I wrote in this page at the time that within a space of only eight days between September 26 and October 4, the world had been shaken by three major air crashes. In Nigeria, on Saturday September 26, no fewer than 167 military officers went down with the well acclaimed Hercules C-130 transporter. Two days later, 156 passengers and crew passed away travelling in Pakistan Airlines Airbus 300 only 90 seconds away from the possibility of a successful emergency landing. Six days later, on October 4, an Israeli Boeing cargo plane crashed into a high rise apartment, in Schipol, Amsterdam, killing about 250 people. As I did observe at the time, there was a common ring to the crashes. The Hercules crashed in Lagos within three minutes of take-off; the Airbus 300 was only eight nautical miles from Kathmandu Airport; the Boeing in Amsterdam also had just taken off. Without warning, its four engines stopped working. Everywhere, the hands of fate were clearly visible, almost audible. In Lagos, the rank and file prospective passengers disembarked to give way to their superiors at the last minute. They were thus granted another opportunity to live but the superiors all died!
The story was told of one of the officers who, perhaps, was helped to miss the flight by a family assignment the wife insisted he must carry out before leaving home. The fear of losing his job and means of family livelihood did not impress the woman. He managed to make it to the airport just as the Hercules was taking off. Disappointed and boiling, he rushed back home, obviously, it was said, to vent his anger on his “obstructive” wife only to be confronted with the news of the Hercules crash breaking! The couple stared at each other speechless. The Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Dangoje has spoken of how he similarly narrowly escaped an air crash in 1996. He was to be on the entourage of his governor to a town in the state. The trip was overtaken by an urgent assignment he had to carry out in the office in the morning. In the two cases, it was not in the weaving of the soldier nor in Dr. Dangoje’s to be part of the harrowing experiences triggered by the two incidents. They were deliberately, indeed forcibly held back by invisible hands.
There was the story of another who declined to travel because his wife was feeling uneasy to embark on the trip. Because they were a very close couple, the man shelved the plan to travel as well. There was yet another case of one of the soldiers who had not seen his elder brother for some time. Their first meeting after that long while was a few minutes the younger one took to stop by at the elder brother’s place. The elder brother pressed him to stay for the weekend since the soldier was visiting on a Saturday. But the younger one insisted he must go, arguing he would miss class for one day. The older man thought one day’s missing of lectures was not enough to spell examination doom. He could always catch up. In the end the younger brother had his way. He flew in the Hercules!
In Amsterdam, the Airbus A300 had just taken off. The October 4, a Sunday was like any other one to residents of a high rise apartment blocks in a residential area that fell under an air corridor. It was the air route the Airbus had always used as done by other planes leaving Schipol. Suddenly the aircraft made for the apartment buildings and crashed into them, one of its engines, zooming off about nine kilometres away, and wreaking havoc on its trail. Meanwhile, aviation fuel from the main body of the Airbus had soaked many an apartment, which from the heat of the impact, exhaust and engine, caught fire.
The story of a Black woman, thought to be a Ghanaian, is particularly moving. She and her daughter were in the comfort of their home when the meandering plane thundered in. The lady had just returned from the church and was in the kitchen cooking. The daughter was in the room. The impact of the collision split their apartment into two, mother and daughter on different sides, save for a connecting living room door which, on this day of all days, was locked! “I could not get the door open,” she said afterwards. From her side of the trap, as the flames leapt towards her, the girl screamed, “Mama, help me…Mama, help…Mama…” The fire engulfed her! Her desperate mother tried all she could but could not reach her daughter. The door of the only connecting room was locked! “Then there was silence and I knew she had gone. The only thing I could do then was try to save myself,” said the broken mother.
This is the nature of tragedies. One minute alive, bright and bouncing, the next minute the man is gone. It is from experiencing the picture of the foregoing that one can understand and share in the agony of the father of the pilot of the ill-fated Air Force aircraft last week, Flt. Lt. Taiwo Olufemi Asaniyi when he said “Only God can wipe my tears.” Flt. Lt. Alfred Olufade married only two months ago. For a long time to come, the event of last Friday, 21 May will remain unforgettable in many a memory and engrained in many a soul. Many pictures will flash through the mind and deep feelings gripping the body. Pictures of intuitive perception and feelings from instincts, both deeply felt but not expressed or given vent, which if expressed may have altered the course of experiencing for some, if not all. These are what we all go through in moments of monumental tragedy and consequent introspection. The nation can’t but be truly in mourning. It cannot easily erase from its memory a crash in which its Chief of Army Staff died in the course of duty.
The world is in unusual times defined by intensification and acceleration of events. Only enlightenment of higher knowledge can see mankind through. For everything, in everything, let us give thanks.