What troubleth thee, thou Air Peace?

IT is now coming with troubling precision that both big and small wahala in the aviation sector are always about Air Peace and considering how fatal air fatalities could get, the most willowy of red on any flags raised by the regulators should worry all. Allen Onyema, the combustible chairman of the airline, also feels unwanted and unloved within the sector. At least, he openly stated that much. Funny enough, his airline has always had a kind of right of first refusal with me, as far as domestic flights are concerned. In all honesty, I can’t even place my fingers on this attaché-kind of patronage commitment, considering the airline doesn’t parade the most courteous of airport staff, at least, in Lagos.  Maybe it was the Peace in the name. Who doesn’t want peace in the air? On a lighter note, there is one airline that sounds like some nasal and chest affliction. I have forever stayed away from it. Even if I have to agree that pure envy of its undeniable soar-away successes is responsible for the buffeting from all angles in the industry, the question is, how did it get to nearly all stakeholders; labour, regulator, safety providers, accident preventers, account keepers et al, hating on this obvious billionaire and his job-offering business?

In an interview, he warned of dire consequences if his airline was eventually programmed out of business. I personally feel it should not get to threat point. In truth, after the fall of Arik, Air Peace is the next Nigeria’s peaceable offering to Africa. From findings, the forces arrayed against him are formidable and the issues are as personal as deeply ethnic (hold my feet on this). I sense the regulators are deliberately relating in a debasing manner, personally, with Onyema because of the boi-boi story around his ownership of the airline, which had been linked with countless persons but him; chief of whom is the former First Lady, Patience “Mama Peace” Jonathan. There is a corner-eye of the regulators and government of the day seeing Onyema as a ruse, an impostor, helping in money laundering and making it practically impossible for what is believed to be proceeds of crime to be taken back. He has denied all of these. I guess also that the official suspicious is mainly responsible for the usual rapid response from the regulators in linking him and his business to the slightest of alleged infraction in the industry and at times, going overboard to specifically mention only Air Peace, when others are also in the same trouble.

Such an overt subjectivity as displayed by the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), on Monday, issuing a statement suggesting that the airline has consistently failed to file Mandatory Occurrence Report (MOR), on incidents involving its aircraft, while listing other alleged offenders as “other airlines,” but copiously leveling passenger-scaring allegations against Onyema’s airline is a shame to professionalism.

• On air pollution

I will rather Onyema’s billions well-investigated and if found slimy, be moved back to the appropriate purse, using the due process of law. Hounding him and his business, as being currently done by government agencies, is harebrained. If there is a clear path of reasonable suspicion, a clearer path of law is there to settle scores, not resorting to jungle justice and self-help, because that is exactly what government is doing right now to him and the danger in the sluggish, poorly-concealed shadow-boxing is turning him to an ethnic project. The moment this current government of Hausa/Fulani is taken to be after another Igbo billionaire, in a political time when Onyema’s kinsmen are allegedly being sieved of relevance, things would get so muddled that he would not only get away with whatever crime government is trying to hang on his neck, but also a gold medal from a sympathetic public.

Oyetola Bombers Vs Adeleke Babes

Regardless of the stance of the Supreme Court tomorrow on who the “lawful” governor of Osun State is, between incumbent Gboyega Oyetola and PDP challenger, Demola “boogie-down” Adeleke, justice would still not have been served democracy. The election in contention was a bazaar, before an obvious sleight of hand was employed to deny the highest bidder his purchased mandate. Even at the level of the two earlier judicial interventions, fraud of technicality has become the prevailing decider. If the arithmetic of individual infra dignitatem is to be correctly worked out, one has committed a crime against the electorate, the other, a serial felon, stealing from the electorate, democracy, his competitor and wheel of justice. The temptation would be to encourage the apex court to give a second chance at redemption to the Thief on the Right, but the judiciary is what it is now, stinking inside, disgusting outside. The Lagosian and others, would do what they gotta do, but let every man remember atunbotan (karma). The  whole world knew whose hand was caught in the cookie jar, though some wigs, are not only filled with cancerous holes of infamy, what drips from those holes are steaming-hot shamelessness. The judicial intervention won’t surely end the game in the state, especially if the incumbent is thrown out. His team roasts badly, whether winning or whining. I expect the turf to go crimson after the judgment. Serubawon’s clan too has its home-grown strikers, though they score more own goals trying to ape their more entrenched opponents. The game here is, however, always played to the benefits of those directly involved, not the people, nation political system or tomorrow. So, wetin go com concern me sef? Abeg, make I move to beta tin.