-Government Suspends Dana Airline License
Sharpedgenews.com has learned that Nigerian authorities may be experiencing difficulty in matching names with the actual identities of persons who perished in Sunday’s Dana Airline airplane disaster in Lagos, as tickets used by some of the victims were bootlegged.
Systemic administrative failure and penchant for fraud which successive aviation authorities did nothing to correct ensured that touts and illegal operators could speculate on domestic flight rates and prices of tickets originally booked in the names borne by final users.
A trip through any of the major departure terminals in Nigerian airports show a consistent pattern of chaos and hustling that can only be imagined than experienced. There is always a mismatch of tickets hoarding, price-fixing and outright extortions by touts and aviation authority officials.
As a result of the “officially approved” disorganization when disaster happens, sharpedgenews.com learned it is always difficult to determine the final identities of casualties.
“Victims do not usually match published names on the manifest,” confided an FAAN source who alleged that the system stinks, from the aviation minister to the last man in the aviation ministry.
The source said that the fitness of any plane to fly at any time can be doctored and circumvented by corrupt officials, a situation said to have been exposed and partially ripped some six years ago under the leadership of then-aviation minister, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode.
But since Ms. Stella Odua, who served as a campaign director-general for Mr. Goodluck Jonathan’s race for president, was given the strategic portfolio of aviation minister without any proven antecedent or administrative competence in the sector, the door had been thrown wide-open for rot to return to the sector.
Inside sources say that Stella Odua has very thin skin for criticism or any constructive suggestions to do things better. She is said to be utterly spiteful of media reports whose reports the aviation sector, mostly from the online news community, only seek for the sector to improve in performance. “Under Odua’s watch, the rot has worsened,” said an angry employee of FAAN who said the minister must be held accountable and tried for Sunday’s crash.
Meanwhile there are growing tensions between authorities of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital on the DNA identification, tagging and release of the remains of the victims and the families. The Teaching Hospital authorities want to be given more time for proper job while the families complain of being ignored. Sources told sharpegenews.com that the root of the problem is the manifest that is not tallying with the travelers who actually died.
The government has withdrawn the operational license of Dana Air as of Tuesday afternoon. The withdrawal will be in place until further notice.