Life Ebbs Away

In 2005, a commercial airplane owned by Sosoliso Airlines coming from Abuja, crashed landed killing all but two passengers on board. The Port-Harcourt inbound flight had 75 school children and the best of our country men and women on board, including the famous Pastor Bimbo Odukoya. It was a sad moment for the country then, and it still is. When on Sunday, 3rd June 2012, another commercial airline (Dana Air) crashed into two-storey buildings, killing all on board; not sparing those it met on its path. The grief that followed, knew no bounds.

With Sosoliso, the nation grew intensely agitated over the spate of plane crashes, the flights of Bell-view, ADC, ChanChangi also added to the death toll. The Nigerian people called for sack of the then aviation minister, it was shortly after the Sosoliso crash, that President Olusegun Obasanjo rallied around and called for a national debate that hosted all stakeholders within and outside of the aviation industry with the aim of putting a standstill to the incessant mishaps, plane crashes and the unnecessary loss of lives. This confab was televised live and broadcasted on radio. I had followed it intensely on radio in 2005. In the conference, all key participants that were called upon aired their views on the way forward on the matter. The revelations were startling; issues were raised appropriately and solutions were equally brought to bear (it covered all aviation technology, administration, engineering, maintenance, funding, investment and management). If the solutions reached during the debate were adequately implemented, perhaps the issues of plane crashes would have been nipped in the bud. But it wasn't. The Dana Airline crash that killed all 159 passengers has proved beyond doubt that we have not learnt from the past or to say the least, we do not want to learn and make required adjustment. And that is the issue that brought me to do this write-up.

It is sad, I wish I had written this note before the recent plane crash, but just like everyone else, I am awakened from my sleep when calamity befalls species of my own kind. And right then and then, I join the crowd in the same rhythmic fashion asking the question: “WHY?” One can not stop asking the question “why?” It is about the only kind of question that seeks to consolidates our human limitations in sympathy to a condition we can not control. As the cries, wailing and sorrow fills the heart of the families of the dead, so also is the extent to which the question “why?” goes. And here I am, asking the question.

Many a time we feel we know what others go through when they are in the middle of their grief, we feel we know but we do not know. We assume a position that negates our own internal emotions and construct. We seek to comfort, whereas we are equally quick to justify their dead. We have become so pathetic, and getting increasingly so, such that our “institutions” that claims it stands for fortitude, prides on the bloodshed and tragedy that befalls mortal men. You hear them chorus, it is “the last day such things are bound to happen”, “our sins are colossal, we are being punished”…. It is as though the more “judgment” and misfortune that befalls man, the more refreshed we get and the more concerted we are in our effort to live arguably in that condition. But the dead are gone; the living can not go to them, neither can they return to us. In spite of this the living knows death is eminent, but never ascribes death on his/herself; however, when others far from them dies, there is always something spiritual and panoramic about it.

Our institutions are failing; our systems are falling and for such, death has got no place to hide. In sympathy to our systemic rot, death comes alive! It makes it rounds and makes monumental harvest in an already failing or failed system. It is not some god or some fairy demon seeking judgmental glorification, it is our life ebbing out in quick succession through the lives of others caught-up in death’s dragnet. When next you hear, see and witness a mishap or calamities happen, resulting to loss of lives, it is life leaving your body in trickles. Have we gotten to the brink of decadence? I suppose we have. Nevertheless, you and I have the power to stop wars, eliminate air planes dropping down from the sky, eradicate the accidents on our roads, end child mortality and maternal deaths and so on, and bring hope to our dying world.

We need to change our ideals and the ideologies of what keeps our world running in this present and pathetic state. "The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth". While religious parlance may hold sway in rigidity and dogmas; individuals should seek to redefine the context of how they live and what manner of change they want to see in the world. Though our world has taken up a lot of illusionary status, giving rise to distorted realities, we must make efforts (individually) to redefine our reality context. Though the world today still stands as it is; as clearly put in the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti:

“the crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. And considering what the world is now with all their misery conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, and so on, man is still as he was: is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive, and he has built a society along these lines.”

Yet a society that negates all the these ills can be built, starting with you! Man and his society are composite beings, and their association is one of symbiosis. We all want to live; but we may as well die in the process, but how?, we do not know. It may as well be in the area or in the place we assume we do not need to make a change in.