Mahmud Jega
Don’t be surprised this week if the number of passengers queueing up to board planes in Nigerian airports declines precipitously. What with the announcement by the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau [NSIB] last week that the crew of an aircraft that overshot the runway at Port Harcourt airport were found to have tested positive for alcohol. Despite the denial by a crew member and the airline’s insistence that it had not received NSIB’s report, alarm bells are ringing in the heads of the travelling public.
Most air passengers have their hearts in their mouths during flights. Captain Dele Ore once recounted in his aviation column what one air traveler told him. He said, “Air travel is the ultimate act of faith. You sit inside a plane; you don’t know how it works; you don’t know where you are; you don’t know the person who is driving it; you don’t know what state he is in; and if something happens, it is not like you know what to do.” Ore disputed this, saying it is like submitting to a professional, as in going for heart surgery.
NSIB’s recent report answered one of the questions agitating the air traveler’s mind, i.e. the pilot’s mental state. It worsened matters! It is bad enough when we hear stories that Okada and Keke Napep riders are often high on substances. Anytime one grabs an Okada commercial motorcycle for a ride, his or her heart is always in the mouth. The way the rider takes off like a rocket, squeezes in between cars and trucks, rushes past red traffic lights, ignores traffic wardens and hurls insults at other road users, your only consolation is that the motor bike is firmly on the ground. Which is not so with a plane.
I heard some people saying, because a pilot drinks alcohol, what is the surprise there? Airline pilots are some of the best paid of all workers. They earn much more than doctors, engineers and all civil servants. Back in 1979 when the newly inaugurated Senate was trying to determine the salaries of political office holders, its ad-hoc committee headed by Senator Jallo Waziri held a public hearing to compare salaries across all sectors. Chief Pilot of Nigeria Airways Capt. Allwell-Brown testified that his salary was N48,000 per annum while a fresh pilot earned N24,000 per annum. Grade Level 17 civil service salary then was N12,000 per annum.
In addition to a juicy salary, pilots spend so much time in the air. Being airborne is stressful because they must listen to the endless chatter of air traffic controllers, look out for bird strikes on their aircraft engines, look out for other planes to avoid collisions, look out for columbus clouds, rain, gusts of wind, even typhoons and hurricanes. When a pilot finally makes it to the ground, what do you expect him to do to celebrate his arrival?
Don’t you see engineers of major construction companies? In the daytime you see them working in the hot sun, often stripped to their pants, shouting at labourers, reading quantity survey charts, having to explain to consultants, visiting governors and ministers on surprise visits to project sites. No wonder that when they close at sunset, they take a quick shower and rush to clubs, there to drink themselves to a stupor. No wonder that potholes pop up on recently completed roads and many bridges in Nigeria don’t have railings, because the engineer was tipsy.
Not only airline pilots, but sailors all over the world are also known for hard living. What do you expect of a man who spends many months at sea, battling with high waves, when all he sees on the horizon is endless water, knowing that at any time his ship could hit a submerged rock or iceberg and once he is thrown into the sea, he must contend with Great White sharks, killer whales, barracudas or get bumped by a 120-tonne Great Blue Whale, whose tongue alone is heavier than a bull elephant?
One of the cabin crew members on the Air Peace flight was even said to have tested positive for cannabis. That could not have been due to poor pay. Marijuana is cheaper than beer, but it is also more potent, because just one moli [as old timers used to call it] can throw the smoker into a trance. Kwam 1 and Kwam 2 will be celebrating right now, that NSIB has finally vindicated them. Who else but a cabin crew member high on cannabis will drag a passenger half naked through a tight aircraft door? Who else but a tipsy pilot will start taxiing with a plane and attempt to crush a passenger who is [innocently] standing on the runway?
I am just wondering; why did NSIB wait until a plane overshot the runway before it took blood samples of pilots and crewmen to test for alcohol and banned substances? Is that not a case of crying after spilled milk? What if the plane had landed in a Port Harcourt creek, or if it had confused the 30 kms completed [but recently washed away] section of the Lagos-Calabar coastal road for the runway? You see, from the air, the very wide coastal road could look like a runway to a tipsy pilot. Is it not in Nigeria recently that a Senator saw villages as his plane was coming in to land at Abuja airport, and he moved a motion on the Senate floor to clear all the villages because they will look like dustbins to international investors?
After that motion was moved on the Senate floor, did it occur to NDLEA and its hardworking Chairman, Brigadier Buba Marwa, to storm the Senate floor and take samples of senators’ blood for testing? If a senator could mistake an aerial view of villages for dustbins, how are we sure that the Order Paper may not look to him like a roll of Indian hemp? All the extra tax bills, the subsidy removal bills, the mega foreign borrowing bills, National Anthem change bill and others that passed without debate, or the N15 trillion road that was not in the budget and no senator noticed it, are we sure it is not the work of banned substances? Is it only poor pilots that must be tested, when there are many people on the ground whose blood samples might contain higher doses of banned substances? Even in terms of threats to life, a pilot that misses the runway could at worst kill several dozen people but a legislator who messes up a primary health care bill could kill tens of thousands of babies.
Which even reminds me. Is it only aviation that needs a Safety Investigation Board? How many air crashes do we have compared to the number of road and bike crashes? Or are we saying that the lives of road passengers are cheaper than those of air travelers? We should immediately have a National Road Safety Investigation Board, NRSIB. I will even tell it where to start. Some years ago, I went to Abuja’s Jabi motor park in the dead of night, looking for diesel for my generator because it was a very hot night. I was told to go behind the lined up commercial vehicles. Lo! and behold, there I saw several dozen drivers, sleeping on cardboard mats, no mattresses or pillows. They were packed tightly together like sardine, waiting for passengers to arrive at dawn, then they will jump into their vehicles and start travelling to towns all over the country. Is that not worse than alcohol or even cannabis? No wonder you see accidents on the road that are difficult to explain.
Not only transport; there must a be a Political Offices Mental Safety Board. Many of the things that civil servants and political office holders do on their desks, you wonder if they did it under the influence, as White people call it. Just as we should conduct random checks of airline crews and commercial drivers’ blood samples, this Board should burst into the offices of civil servants at random and test their blood samples. Not only civil servants; party leaders, ministers and governors should also be subjected to random blood testing, given the way they overshoot financial runways every day.
All these cases that were are reading in the newspapers every day, that one public officer is being charged to court because billions of naira were found in his account and he owns several dozen houses, should he be taken to a court or to a mental hospital? You are even endangering the judge’s mental stability. Many years ago when I was a patient at Dala Orthopaedic Hospital in Kano, my senior schoolmate who was then a magistrate in Kano visited me. He told me he was considering resigning from the judiciary in order to safeguard his mental health. He said most of the cases police brought to his court were Yan Daba thugs. He asked one accused person why he stabbed to death the richest Alhaji on his street. The thug replied that it was because the man frowned at him as he drove past in his Mercedes. We need a Judicial Mental Safety Investigations Board.
ThisDay
