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T H I S D AY • MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2017
EDITORIAL LESSONS FROM THE DANA AIR CRASH Airlines must be closely regulated
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t is almost five years since Dana Air Flight 992 crashed, less than five minutes before landing at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos. It was one of the most tragic air mishaps in the country as 163 lives were lost, including 147 passengers, six crew and 10 people on the ground. With the release last week of the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) report, the crash has been attributed to double engine failure, human error and laxity of the regulator, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). We hope the authorities will work to correct these lapses. According to the AIB accident investigation report, the first engine of the aircraft failed 17 minutes into the flight and the second engine failed moments before it eventually crashed. The human error pointed out by the bureau was the failure of the pilot in command to return to the airport of departure when the first engine failed. He reportedly took a fatal risk in the bid to get to Lagos because he had a flight to make to the United States that night. Meanwhile, according to aviation NIGERIANS ARE MIFFED experts, it would have THAT THE ACCIDENT taken the aircraft INVESTIGATION REPORT about 20 minutes to WAS RELEASED ALMOST make a U-turn, fly FIVE YEARS AFTER back and land at the THE CRASH, THUS Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, INDICATING A SLUGGISH Abuja. INVESTIGATION The AIB report also indicted NCAA and accused it of laxity because there was indication that shortly before the accident, an official in the regulatory authority had grounded the Dana Air fleet for lack of airworthiness but that decision was upturned. Although some of the relatives of the deceased in the Dana Air Flight 992 crash took legal action over the compensation of the victims of the crash, the airline was able to compensate those who chose to abide by
Letters to the Editor
aviation regulation in such circumstances. Perhaps the mitigating factor is that Dana Air remains perhaps the only airline involved in such accident that has so far substantially compensated the families of the victims. Such efforts in the past were mired in controversy because the aircraft involved in previous accidents were allegedly not fully insured. Nevertheless, many Nigerians are miffed that the accident investigation report was released almost five years after the crash, thus indicating a sluggish investigation. This much was confirmed by the AIB Commissioner, Akinola Olateru who said that he met 37 uncompleted reports when he took over at the bureau in January this year. Against the background that when the cause of an air accident is known, it helps to avert a similar one in future, we hope the authorities will move quickly on the outstanding reports.
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EDITOR IJEOMA NWOGWUGWU DEPUTY EDITORS BOLAJI ADEBIYI, JOSEPH USHIGIALE MANAGING DIRECTOR ENIOLA BELLO DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR KAYODE KOMOLAFE CHAIRMAN EDITORIAL BOARD OLUSEGUN ADENIYI EDITOR NATION’S CAPITAL IYOBOSA UWUGIAREN
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NEED TO REFORM OUR RAILY SYSTEM
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hen our colonial master built the first railway in Nigeria in 1898 linking Lagos and Abeokuta in old Western region in today’s South-west Nigeria, it was only Britain, the United States of America and few other countries that had such facilities. Naturally, anyone would expect almost 119 years down the line, Nigeria should have built an excellent national rail network with latest models of fast moving trains seen in the developed economies, but that is not the case. Paradoxically, many countries that started train services long after Nigeria had perfected that mode of transportation by using it for efficient human transportation and bulk cargo haulage. But ours remains in near comatose state. In countries like Germany, France, United Kingdom even in South Africa and Egypt, for instance, underground and surface rail tracks are linked to the seaports, airports and land borders. This ensures efficient movement of people and facilities, quick distribution of needed goods like machinery, bulk cargo like cement, wheat, fertilisers, precious stones, perishable and non-perishable food items like tomatoes, cows and medicals, among others. In South Africa, the metrorail operates commuter rail services in the major urban areas. The metrorail
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fter the Dana accident, some technical and safety issues were raised by industry stakeholders. One of such issues was having expatriates as both the pilot in command and the flight officer. It was for instance indicated that if the pilot, who was a US citizen, was familiar with Nigeria’s airspace, he would have chosen Runway 18R, known as the international runway instead of the Runway 18L, the domestic runway on which he demanded to land. This is because Runway 18R would have taken him a shorter time to navigate to and he might have been inside the airport by the time the aircraft crashed. The lessons from the Dana Air Flight 992 may be many but to ensure the safety of Nigeria airspace, the NCAA must have close monitoring of the airlines and strictly regulate their activities. Airlines should also stop assigning flights to pilots who are due for vacation. Much more important, the NCAA must ensure that any expatriate pilot who is to fly in Nigeria must be familiar with all the airports, especially the alternative airports to the airport of departure and destination.
system consists of over 470 stations, over 2,220km of tracks and carries over 1.7 million passengers daily. In the United Kingdom, trains are preferred to buses and in some cases flights due to efficiency. If you want to travel to France from UK, many preferred trains to flight on daily basis. In all these countries, modern light rail, monorail and latest electric trains are rapidly replacing the old locomotives. According to global records, Europeans and Asians operate the fastest high speed trains in the world as seen in Shanghai maglev, Harmony CRH 380A and Targo Avril. Some go as fast as 360km/hr, making them excellent alternatives to air transportation. But Nigeria still relies heavily on the slower locomotive trains (some as slow as 35km/hr) that pollute the atmosphere. Worse still, the country is yet to develop hubs and spokes system for the trains to ensure total coverage of Nigeria. But railways remain a major revenue earner for operators and government alike. It is also a major employer of labour, which informed why developed nations seek to sustain and improve the sub-sector. Some transport analyst has described our railway services as a monumental disgrace, attributing its perennial wobbly and sorry state to blind politics, corruption, unchecked graft, ethnic differences and other challenges. Otimkpu Paschal, Awka
EFFECT POVERTY ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
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ducation is a process through which individual acquires skills, competencies, and attitude. It is the right of every child to be educated. Thus, education is regarded as culture to man, people and the nation of the world at large. This explains why man has to educate himself and his offspring in the society. Poverty is one of the factors militating against man from carrying out his educational activities perfectly, poverty as the state of being poor. Poverty as a way of life characterised by low calorie intake, inaccessibility of adequate health facilities, low quality education system, low life expectancy, unemployment and under-employment. At the national level, a nation can be considered poor when her economic standard is very low and this automatically makes the nation underdeveloped. The economy of a country that does not attain certain stage of development in terms of infrastructure and other development indices. As regard poverty in the family level, we are referring to the home background. Even before the indigenous education or western type of education, the home has always been the agency through which man learns various aspect of life to enable him live a meaningful life. The home which is also known as traditional way of educating the young ones is still regarded as the first school of a child before he enters the larger society.
The role of the home cannot be over-emphasised because of the general assumption that the state of poverty in the family or home goes to a long way to determine the extent of youth educational development. Education is seen by many as the route to alleviate poverty. There is no doubt that meaningful education is the most potent instrument for alleviating and eventually abolishing poverty. In considering the effect of poverty on academic performance of students to be precise, the home background is the most important phenomenon that needs to be seriously considered in order to enhance the effective study of the relationship between poverty and students’ academic performance. In view of this, some factors that needed to be considered in the home or family background are parents’ academic qualification, socio-economic class and facilities available in homes or home environment as well as parent status. Evidence shows that in Nigeria, the number of those in poverty has continued to increase every year. When the government came into power, it was estimated that some people in Nigeria lived in poverty. Poverty has an impact on students’ educational performance. Different scholars have discovered that poverty affects the learning and performance of the students in their educational development. Micah Nuhu, Dept. of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri