The Catholic Bishop of
Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah has attributed air and other disasters in Nigeria to corruption and ineptitude in government.
Kukah made this known in Abuja recently at the memorial symposium and launch of a N500 million fund for the “60 Angels Memorial Staff Residence”, in memory of the 60 students of the school who lost their lives in the Sosoliso crash.
He said that the disasters were the off short of bad governance and corruption that have dogged the country’s development, alleging that government officials divert huge resources from public fund, while nothing is left to carry out strategic infrastructure development.
“What we are reaping is what the hand of fate has dealt us, namely a tale of tragedy, misfortune and disaster which has come to be known as governance in Nigeria. It is almost impossible to understand how and why other nations like India built on and turned the colonial railways into one of the most prestigious and economically viable areas of employment in their country”, he said.
According to him, sadly, in our own situation, the areas of our greatest failure such as electricity and public infrastructure have proved to be the most lucrative for the operators.
He remarked that today, power and transportation have become the bottomless pits into which the nation’s resources are being sunk, adding that the challenge is not so much over the commitment of those trying to turn Nigeria’s sad condition around but what to do with those in the bureaucracy and outside of it who have come see “our collective suffering as the basis for their enrichment”.
Kukah said the aviation industry has changed, would continue to change but for the citizens to be safe, Nigeria must ride the crest of change and appreciate that aviation is driven by precision technology that has no room for a culture of managing.
“Those who manage the business continue to assure us that we are safest in the skies. The tragedy with our situation is that we are unable to learn lessons because of the “C” word, corruption.
For many years, standards were lowered, based on corruption, patronage, clientelism and the feeling that aviation was also one way of making money”, he said.
The Catholic Bishop opined that successful Nigerian businessmen and women tend never to plough their profits into improving the quality of services. The result is that services are poor and expensive.