June 12, (THEWILL) – After watching the former minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika’s interview on Arise Television this afternoon, June 11, 2023, I have come to the realisation that Sirika is not only delusional and narcissistic, but that he also lacks sagacity.
For him to assume that Nigerians are dumb and unintelligent implies that the motivations deluded his sense of self-regulation. If he was aware that 130 airlines have gone bankrupt in Nigeria in the past 30 years, what, then, is the motivation to induce the government to invest in a national airline?
Motivation has three components: activation, persistence, and intensity. When one is submerged in all three, most times, he/she becomes delusional. Sirika is a consummate reprobate when money becomes the ultimate object of attraction.
On several occasions, most Nigerians expressed consternation that the idea of floating a national carrier, in the advent of our economic regression, was unnecessary, unviable, and a direct competition to the majority of the private airlines in the country struggling to survive. The court injunction that prevented further amplification of the project was and is still in force; but as stated above, the former minister’s proclivity to his corrupt utopia was too intense to see otherwise.
The stage show of using an Ethiopian Airlines’ B737-800 aircraft with Nigeria Air’s livery was not just deceptive but impolitic in every sense of the word.
It is, as of today, impracticable, except with forensic investigations, to know how much the Federal Government has spent on the phantom national carrier, Hadi’s pet project. Telling Nigerians that only N5 billion has been spent is arrogantly insulting when millions of Nigerians are starving to death.
The former aviation minister is a man of no enviable pedigree. From a forlorn attempt at being a professional pilot to being a one-term member in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, his large appetite for social accolades and opulence wouldn’t allow him to turn away from illicit funds, no matter the cost. His disposition has been “get-rich-quick”, live like an Arab Prince from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The opportunity came with Buhari’s ineptitude glaringly spread on the national stage.
As the minister of aviation, he barred the institutionalization of all agency boards under the Ministry of Aviation. Nigeria’s aviation industry was his patrimony, and all the players were vassals. The sole minister’s authority reigned through the last four years of Buhari’s poor leadership. When aviation was under the Ministry of Transportation, he vehemently fought the senior minister, Rotimi Amaechi, in the first four years of Buhari’s wasted adventure.
The audacity to carve out a separate ministry of aviation, which Buhari unhesitantly approved, gave Sirika the undue pomposity to craft every citizen of Nigeria into vassalage. Tax-payers’ funds were at his disposal to dispense unchecked and unaccounted for. The deluge of unqualified personnel from his enclave that he imposed on all the agencies under his ministry cannot be overstated. Sirika was the lord, and everyone else was his subject.
Hadi’s deception was not limited to Nigeria Air alone. He unilaterally proposed the concession of the four major airports: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Kano. The dynamics of the concession arrangements are still a mystery to all industry actors. The spurious nature of the private participation in the airports’ management rests on using his proxies to hold forth the assets for him.
After his departure from office, a stream of income must remain in his bank accounts to support his social splendour of Argentine Horses, fleet of cars, and properties all over the world. All at the dire straits of Nigerians. His flamboyant life is lucid. But like an ostrich, he has insidiously buried his head in the sand while his body is visible to predators.
The bundle of lies that the fire trucks meant for the government airports attracted Value Added Tax (VAT) and other statutory charges, which prompted the inflated price of N1.2 billion per truck, is flatly dubious.
Thank God that every government in Nigeria has a terminal date. Buhari’s nepotic administration has extinguished; a new president is in vogue
Tinubu should start recovering looted funds from the former minister of aviation. Others can follow, thereafter.
*** Written by Dan Omale
