Nigeria whats going On..!!!

[chuks]

Not so long ago...

There were more local operators in Lagos than you could shake a stick at. Where did they all go?

Let me guess; the colonial masters did away with them! Yes! They used their usual wicked tricks, wanting loans to be repaid and scheduled maintenance to be done; they were writing performance charts that meant you couldn't fly with a full load off a short runway on a hot afternoon and hope to live; they designed their aircraft to be unable to fly without fuel or to land in zero visibility; Boeing made the 727 unable to be rolled over on its back safely... There is no end to what those poor old local operators and their crews had to endure, until they were mostly gone, out of business after a series of disasters financial and otherwise.

Don't worry, Balewa. Once Nigeria gets independence (from reality) then you are sure to have a career in aviation there. Until then, I am siding with Oompilot's view for the most part, just going from what I have seen, except that I would extend his negative assessment a bit further, to the operators, to the regulators... well, to the whole darn Nigerian scene, in fact! Nigeria is run by fraudsters for fraudsters, when aviation is one thing that you just cannot fool around with in that way and not expect to get your fingers burnt. Getting your performance calculations wrong is not the same as finding out that you just bought a fake phone card.

I lost friends and colleagues there, too many to count, and came up against so many people in aviation who simply came across as 'not having paid much attention in school.' When I would snatch us out of the jaws of disaster then the guilty party would just look at me as if to say, 'You are the Captain.' In the next moment he or she would be bitching about how I was never letting my poor old put-upon FO have the chance to display what must be superior ability. I mean, literally, that I would still be shaking from the last time that I had felt the hot breath of the cat of death on my neck when it was, 'Hey, so what? Okay, I forgot to keep visual on that aircraft we were passing in descent on a visual clearance [a pure suicide attempt], but why are you so picky? C'mon, I want another go.'

The flash was always there in Nigeria, but the substance was often lacking. I remember so many guys who needed those Ray-Bans, not to be blinded by their own bling, while they were usually blind to their own lack of ability, to that need we all have to self-assess and continue to learn. Not always, and it's too true that many ex-pat losers tend to settle there like sludge, but it was a truism that you just never knew what you were going to get with Nigerian aviation; that went right back to the way modern Nigeria has gone steadily downwards ever since 1961.

I ended up in North Africa for a while, after too many years in Nigeria. The desert was a terrible place, but the locals were so much easier to work with that you would not believe that. As in, you give them a job; they do the job. Finish palaver!

I met people from all over Africa there, except for one place everybody seemed to be down on: Nigeria. I would try to tell them that Nigeria wasn't so bad, when they would just look at me as if to say that I must have spent too long out in the sun without my hat on. You tell me why, but people are just down on the place and its people. Other Africans besides those nasty Boers, I mean! That might be why even the Nigerians with the bucks don't want to fly with their own local operators.