WAKE UP: News of Nigeria becoming aircraft manufacturing country before 2023 gladdens my heart

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

“At this point I salute the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Armed Forces particularly the Army, who labour hard amidst pull-them-down activities of fifth columnists to build public confidence. It is sad that we have some learned members of the pen profession, who still do not know what the DSS really does and wants.”

The recent news break that Nigeria will join the group of developed countries doing well with manufacturing of high technology it needs before President Muhammadu Buhari leaves office in 2023 is heartwarming and gladdening to the ears.

Sad enough, however, the cheering news failed to receive multiple editorial dimensions that usually follow if such report was about the number of Nigerian soldiers, police, DSS personnel, school children ambushed, kidnapped or killed and other negative reports that many supposed Nigerians would mindlessly want to be published or broadcast just for the reason of satisfying the political interest of their sponsors or carrying out the whims and caprices of their foreign funders, which, in the long run, may make them end up having no country of their own.

To me, it was sad that my WAKE UP column had to come this late on this topic. It had better been late, though, than never. I had in the last 10 days had close shaves with death by a very terrible malaria and typhoid fever complications that threatened to deprive my growing fans, increasing readers globally and my innocent wife and children their joy of my continuous existence.

Some had capitalised on the sad moment to run their mouths in justification of their push against our #StandWithBuhari&Nigeria with a particular one saying, whether jokingly or real, that, “Now you are dying alone. Do you see Buhari or any of the Fulanis you sacrifice your comfort to defend coming to your assistance?”

That was when I was alone in my Abuja hotel for four days between Friday 28 through Tuesday 31 August, 2021 that I was ferried to Lagos and I saw the practical of the way to heaven. It is only him that Allah sent that could help in that soletary confinement. I pitied my wife who remained alone with it but, today, I am back alive. I had never been this sick except during my days in Vanguard Media Limited.

It was the worst moment to put one’s loyalty to test on the course he believes in. To get drifted away from a good cause like #StandWithBuhari&Nigeria is not a difficult task in such a time when one, having occupied the position of a star to many relations far and near, finds himself cut down between the jaws of death only awaiting a rescuer and finds no one to save him except his wife alone and alone in terms of everything. That Allah has made me stand again means that he has made me pass yet another test of life and I will never stop the cause.

Worst as I was being ferried home from Abuja to Lagos, some of those that are only concerned with the good services that I provide but care not whether I have a good health and living delivering those services still managed to get me pick their calls –voice audible or not – only for them to put a walking corpse on the line for another heavy duty that my health was already too weak to execute. Is that to say that journalism does not pay? No! That is where the world has reached, journalism especially. You don’t grow until you do fine bara (ask for alms) where colleagues now publish account details, soliciting for money to offer investigative journalism. Who asked you to do the job? What is your job as a journalist if you are not investigative?

More saddening is that doing fine bara to sustain self in journalism is easiest way to get compromised in the noble profession. Many that complain about activities of hatchet job reporting, however, do not find a noble way to enable practitioners of patriotic journalism bail them out for sustainable continuity, yet it is the very important Fourth Estate of the Realm naturally equipped with divine duty to mar or make any society. Managers of the societies —nations states or Muslim Ummah— should have seen the need to help practitioners in the media sector grow if truly their complaint against unpatriotic journalists is down to the bottom of their hearts.

To some of us, journalism is our professional destination of choice and the only thing we know best how to do is to do it with passion and achieve perfection in practice. It is a contract that we have signed for, with our Lord for the good of country, Nigeria. We want to be able to present a record before him that we helped the leaderships, both of our country and Ummah, as well as joined in uniting the tribes and created avenues for achieving peaceful co-existence among peoples of various religious backgrounds in the cosmopolitan society of ours, while also ensuring the rights of our immediate families to goodies of life.

At this point I salute the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Armed Forces particularly the Army, who labour hard amidst pull-them-down activities of the fifth columnists to build public confidence. It is sad that we have some learned members of the pen profession, who still do not know what the DSS really does and wants. As a result, they choose to stand with criminals and terrorists albeit across regions screaming in defence of human rights of those evil ones while running down the other side, the security agencies particularly the DSS and the Armed Forces.

Waking back to life, I saw what gladdened my heart. It is the news that Nigeria will commence manufacturing of aircrafts before 2023, according to the nation’s Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika. Today, being my first day in 10 days that I can lift my fingers to write in the press, and observing that this cheering news was just plotted to be buried as usual by the same hatchet journalists against the Muhammadu Buhari’s tedious but desirable tasks of giving to us the Nigeria of our dream, I see the importance of reopening once again the vital-but-made-unpopular achievement of this administration for the readers and believers of our newspaper, The DEFENDER.

It would be recalled that there was another vital but also not properly sung news of how Nigeria would now begin on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway manufacturing of 400,000 vehicles per annum from local contents with about N500 billion investment that Nigeria has kickstarted with Mikano. That was my major cheering hyped news about Nigeria before I fell.

But before I continue, let me say this, “If you believe you want to work for Nigeria or your Ummah, do not expect anyone who will thank or lift you because you will rather find more that will relegate you to the pit of hell. That I can assure you. But if you survive in the end, go and know that while hard labour is done alone, spending and enjoying the proceeds of hard labour are things you send invitation to no one before they come finding you.” The irony of life.

President Buhari is doing it and only his name is left for a bash today and some of us, who are diehard supporters of his “stingy” administration, are at the risk of losing everything without help just that we may have a country where we will have no need to know anybody before we access the goods of life in the nearest future. When the better Nigeria comes, those who took foreign aides and had local political sponsors to kill the country will shamefully struggle against us to occupy positions of relevance.

So, it was good to hear on Tuesday, 25 August, 2021, that the Federal Government of Nigeria had stated that it was ready to partner with Magnus Aircraft Industry in Hungary to commence complete manufacturing of aircraft in Nigeria before the end of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in 2023.

Senator Hadi Sirika, Minister of Aviation, disclosed this while on an inspection visit to the Magnus Aircraft Industry in Pogany, Hungary. He noted that the partnership is to assemble airplanes from start to finish locally.

“If we venture with them, we may start with assembling plants and later manufacturing,” Sirika said.

Sirika explained that Magnus aircrafts company has an aeroplane that is good for military training, an aerobatic manoeuvre, and is made of fully composite materials with high strength but very lightweight.

The minister noted that aerobatics is the practice of flying manoeuvres involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flights, explaining that erobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sports.

Sirika further expressed satisfaction with the features and more than willing to facilitate the production of the aeroplanes in Nigeria, he said one of the significant features of the Magnus aircraft is that they use normal car petrol and outperform any training aircraft of their kind.”

The minister, who was at the facility on the invitation of the company, said the proposed partnership with the aircraft manufacturer will be subjected to further analysis to verify the market and government willingness to partner with a significant amount of money and logistics.

He emphasised that the local production of aircraft in the country will facilitate the growth of Nigeria as a regional aviation superpower as it will also come with maintenance and repair facilities that will attract patronage from neighbouring countries.

That is the Nigeria that we sacrifice to have, a country where domination of foreign currencies in a way that cut throats of the locals in purchasing power for naira will be a thing of the past. May Allah make it happen in our lifetime.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

*This WAKE UP opinion column article, vetted by senior Journalists including Abdullahi El-Kurebe (Sokoto), Olayinka Ajayi (Lagos) and Marufh Bello (Oyo), was written by an Akure, Ondo State Prince and Lagos based Journalist, Bashir Adefaka. Reach him via his email: omope72@gmail.com or phone 08163323906.