| Ban on Slok Air horrendous
-Soyinka
By CHRISTIAN ITA and PATRICK ASONYE
Thursday, August 12, 2004
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Soyinka
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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Five months after the Federal Government suspended the operating
licence of Slok Airline, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka,
has urged the National Assembly to intervene in the matter
on behalf of the beleaguered airline and its workers.
Speaking in Lagos shortly before jetting out of the country
Monday night, Soyinka said the issue has become a national
embarrassment that required the urgent action of the federal
lawmakers if the country must avoid ridiculing itself in the
eyes of the international community.
He spoke with candour, saying: "This is the time when
the President, the National Assembly, should step in on behalf
of this airline. What is going on is wrong. It is morally
wrong and it is unjustifiable even by international standards.
"I read virtually every single aspect of the story (media
report on ban on Slok). I read the legal aspect and for me,
what is going on right now is illegal. It is required that
a notice should be given, there are a number of days the airline
should be given to put right whatever was wrong. This is lawlessness,
it is lawlessness and it is a very negative, unproductive
and counter-productive kind of lawlessness. I think this is
something members of the National Assembly should table as
an urgent matter. They should summon the Minister of Aviation
or whoever is responsible to come and justify this action
especially in relation to similar actions, which I call boju-boju
action like the case of IRS (Federal Government had banned
IRS airline alongside Slok Air March 12 only for the former
to be unbanned a week later). It seems to me it is just an
attempt to show it is not a kind of vindictive gesture.
"It is a national embarrassment. When I travel domestically,
I see this plane. I say ‘ What airline is this, what
is it doing on the tarmac?’ Then I read the papers saying
it was on suspension.
"All of us, we fly all the time on the international
routes, on the domestic airlines of other nations, in the
United States especially. Some of the airlines are very tiny,
tiny airlines, sometimes owning not more than two propeller
planes which hop like bolekaja, from one point to the other.
They are encouraged to survive.
"When they offend stated down guidelines of the air safety
regulation authority, they are fined or are given charges
and have to defend themselves, have to prove that they have
mended this particular area of deficiency. They are not hammered
out of existence as brutally as is being done to this particular
airline. Sometimes pilots’ licenses are suspended if
the pilots commit an infraction against safety regulations.
Hardly ever do you have an airline being brutally hammered
out of existence as this one.
"Now, having gone into the very peculiar aspect of this
situation, it is difficult for the government to avoid the
inference that there is a political vendetta behind it. This
shows a meanness of spirit. If it is true- and for me, it
is going to be difficult for the government to escape the
clear inference that this is political vendetta, playing with
peoples’ livelihood, playing with the very prospect
of industrial expansion in the country- I think this speaks
very ill of the government.
I am not good at quantification of monies (Slok is reported
to have lost N5b to the closure). Even if all they are going
to lose is N1, it is wrong. It is wrong that they should be
penalized in such a way that they do not even have the means
to regenerate that N1 as quickly and as effectively and productively
as possible.
"I salute the courage and the determination of the airline
in continuing to pay its workers (Slok management has been
paying its work-force despite the ban in the last five months).
But management is quite right to say we can only carry on
so far.
"We have no right to sit down and fold our arms because
it is Slok today. Who is it going to be tomorrow and who else
has it been that we don’t know anything about, that
people have just given up and said ‘Oh my God, this
government, the moment they don’t like your face, they
cripple you. Abacha used to do things like that against enemies.
He didn’t just torture people, he didn’t just
imprison people, he also bankrupted perceived enemies economically.
"It is shocking to me to see democratically elected government
putting itself in a position where it can be accused, with
a prima facie plausibility of being guilty of the same thing.
Democracy is not only supposed to be the practice of accountability,
but transparency.
"We’ve got to be sure that the government is working
transparently viz- a- viz. the disciplining of erring entities
in the society.
"It (ban on Slok) gives a horrendous impression outside.
Outside, I know people are studying the situation closely.
For instance, those who leased the planes to Slok, they are
following what is happening, they have the ears of their representatives
in the Senate, in the Congress. They have their members who
seriously look after the interest of their constituency and
would report back on what is going on in Nigeria to the Senate.
It is a very dangerous tendency. If Slok is allowed to go
under, believe me, the reverberations may not be felt immediately
but I guarantee you they will be felt sooner or later in any
respect. Some may not be felt, they may just be some private
enterprising individuals who want to come and do business
and they would tell them to better go and ask Slok what their
experience was before coming to Nigeria. So, let people not
think that actions of this type are limited to the borders."
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