Editorial
Allen Onyema: Upping the ante of patriotism
The name of Allen Onyema, has been on the lips of many Nigerians for the past one week or so now. Not that he is a stranger to Nigerians or vice versa. In fact, he has been a household name since he broke into national consciousness with his Air Peace Airlines – an outfit that is as strange in its ways as its numerous deeds are pleasant to the souls of many a compatriot.
Outside the enemies of Nigeria, of which there are a surfeit that the nation is cursed to live with and endure, prancing about everywhere including the corridors of powers at every level, only very few would likely discountenance the positive impact of what he has done for Nigeria using this carrier.
When Nigerians were being killed in South Africa as a result of the xenophobia that broke out in the country, it was Onyema that elected on his own to deploy his aircrafts to lift them out of the country and bring them home. That was in 2019. A few months after, in 2020, during the outbreak of COVID-19, when foreign airlines shut their doors on Nigerians or charged cut-throat fares, he was the one the nation ran to once again to rescue citizens.
Between April and May, 2023, he was again on song, this time to airlift Nigerians from Sudan, after the country broke out into a fratricidal conflagration that caused non-citizens to flee the enclave. At great risk and cost, he again responded swiftly and diligently. In all these interventions, the common denominator, was that missions were carried out in the main, free of charge.
In other words, he bore the cost himself. And what cost? The money involved were not minor amounts that could be waved away lightly. They were industry-size costs capable of making serious dents on any firm, and could indeed bore holes into the pocket of both Air Peace himself as a businessman. Yet he endured.
Look at his latest foray on the Nigeria-London-Nigeria route, which commenced operations on Saturday, March 30, 2024. A typical Nigerian businessman could have keyed into it to make a kill. If Onyema were not some kind of uncommon, scarce and far-in-between patriot, he would have seized the moment like his contemporaries in exploiting the current systematic bastardisation of a country under the heavy pall of all manner of greedy Shylocks, practically squeezing the very life out of the citizens.
What if he had just halved the prices of his tickets on that route? He would still have been been smiling to the banks with humongous profits, while seen at home as a hero with the same people he would be exploiting eulogising him. But did he travel that route?
Indeed, before he moved in, there had been a flood of tales of terrible and horrible experiences Nigerians went through outside the asphyxiating cost imposed on them as fares. One of the stories, narrated how in one of the neightbouring countries, where two Nigerians, had gone in the search of cheap tickets, after being fleeced by criminal immigration officials, were clamped into a jail on trumped-up charges and later jailed – a double jeopardy, having lost their London opportunities.
During his appearance on Monday, on The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise Television, the airlines boss elaborated on the impetus of his intervention – how Nigerians travelled to as far as Morocco, Egypt, Qatar and other near and distant countries just to reduce the heavy financial weight as well as the hassles of running around for the reprieve.
Hear him: “Nigerians are happy. It is as if a kind of burden has been lifted off their shoulders. A situation where Nigerians were paying (through their nose) – my own staff, paid N15million on Business Class to the UK. Some people paid N17million. Then, because some people couldn’t pay, Nigerians were going to South Africa, fly six hours to South Africa, overfly Nigeria airspace to fly to London, for another nine or 10 hours, just to get a cheaper fare.
Onyema addressing his colleagues at the event
“Nigerians were going to Morocco, Egypt, Qatar, eight hours, lay over of about three hours, you do another eight hours to the UK, just to get something cheaper. Then, if you want to fly direct, it’s a different ball-game. The humongous fare was unbearable for them.
“But when we came, what we did was, assuming we slashed the N15million to N10million, people will still clap for us. But, no, we brought it to where it belonged. We brought it down to N4million. We’re not losing by doing N4million. That I can tell you. We brought it – Business Class to N4million, brought the Economy Class to N1.2million and at the same time giving students rebates.
“Immediately, the same airlines that were giving dollar as an excuse, for the fleecing of my country, came down withing 24 hours. Air Peace distorted the market. All of them started coming down within 24 hours. They started begging people, doing social media rounds all over the place and brought their fares from N15-17million to N5million and even begging people.”
Now, he has taken his hitherto one man show patriotism a notch higher. He is now trying to co-opt others playing in his league to follow suit. On Thursday, he made the first pitch publicly by when he addressed members of the Corporate Nigeria under the aegis of Organised Private Sector (OPS). One of the guests, he was quoted by Ajuri Ngelale, President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, as seizing the opportunity of a parley with the Nigerian leader to plead with his colleagues, to deliberately slash down the price of their commodities, goods and services.
Citing his own example when the President hosted members of the OPS to Iftar – the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims in Ramadan at the time of adhan (call to prayer) of the Maghrib prayer – at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Onyema, pleaded with his colleagues to copy the example of Air Peace, in order to help the President, achieve his goals.
Hear him: “President Tinubu is thinking of the Nigeria of the future. The ease of doing business is coming back gradually. I can attest to that in the aviation sector because of the people you appointed to head that sector. I can also attest to what our High Commission in the United Kingdom did in making Air Peace flights into Gatwick Airport a possibility.’’
Whirlwindnews.com.ng is on all fours with this patriotic call. We cannot thank Onyema enough for the manner he has deployed his resources in the service of Nigerians. This call is just one of the demonstrable evidences of his loyalty to the nation and the people of Nigeria. What Onyema succeeded in saying at that forum, even without doing so directly is that these people could still live large without killing Nigerians through their exploitative ways.
No doubt, the call is likely to fall on deaf ears in the main, because the audience he was addressing is made up of those who put the country in its current parlous state in the first place – the economic brigands who have adopted all manner of ways to pillage the nation’s commonwealth and fleece Nigeria to the bones.
Yes! Amongst them are the foreign exchange speculators, who have warehoused the forex they got from official sources in the evil gambit of selling them off to make huge profits rather than employing them to purchase machinery and raw materials to produce and grow the economy.
Seated in that audience were likely to be the bankers that never do any real sector business outside cheating the system and declaring outlandish profits or those responsible for the wanton and indiscriminate hike in prices of their products out of sheer pleasure of watching Nigerians suffer as would medieval sadist that see human suffering as sport.
Yes! There were thieves in that audience, for whom the words of Onyema, would be like pouring water on the back of a duck and who rather than be roused to pity and repentance like the people of Biblical Nineveh, were likely to be thumbing their nose at him, if not cursing under their breaths and angling for his head on platter as would Herod with John the Baptist.
Yet, he has spoken as a patriot. Perhaps, few might buy into his message, have a change of heart and do something in this direction. Nobody knows how much a little downward dip in the price noodles or biscuit could save the mother preparing his child for school from her nagging headache or how happy that man trying to erect a two-room structure in his village could be on hearing that he could now buy cement cheaper.
Even if unheeded, let Onyema’s pleas continue to be the tiny voice knocking at the conscience of those who hear them in that audience. One day, something must certainly give!
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
-
News3 weeks agoBREAKING: Terrorists strike Ibadan again! Abduct ex-Minister’s sister, twin children
-
News1 week agoBREAKING: Troops rescue wife of kidnapped General! *Terrorists flee scene
-
News3 weeks agoEmeka Ike: I’ll make example of Lere Olayinka for prying into my privacy
-
News2 weeks agoBREAKING: Count me out, Okonkwo tells Atiku *Amaechi VP’s choice an insult to Ndigbo
-
News4 weeks agoTinubu’s $9million lobby deal in jeopardy *Group goes after US firm
-
News2 weeks agoDickson: Obi, a big asset to NDC, we’re working together … but!
-
Columns4 weeks agoAtiku-Amaechi tag-team: An indication of ADC’s hideous plan for Obi
-
News2 weeks agoOvia, ex-Zenith Bank boss swings into luxury apartments *Flats hit $2.8million price tag