If they were competent enough to actually run and maintain a national airline, they would be able to train their own pilots, wouldn’t they.
But they’re not. There's too much greed, corruption and incompetence. You are talking about a country where people have "Warning! This house is not for sale" daubed on their walls so that their houses don't get sold out from under them by conmen whilst they are out shopping. Nigeria isn't exactly the most efficient place in the world and what makes it like that are the people who live there, this is an inescapable fact. If the majority of Nigerians were competent and smart (qualities you would really hope for in a pilot) the the country wouldn't be in the state it's in.
But they're not. It is the 8th largest exporter of oil in the world, but the world's 20th poorest nation. Go figure.
If the (Nigerian) airline operators there weren’t just in it for a quick and dirty, lease-aircraft, no FDP limits, maintenance-on-the-apron, bare-minimum buck, things would be different.
But they’re not. As for competency, take IRS airlines for example. The SA contractors left last December, leaving 3 operational F28’s. Now (3 months later) there is only 1 operational F28. Their AOC was withdrawn recently for safety concerns. Sounds pretty incompetent to me, letting it all go down the tubes in 3 months.
The fact that no-one is surprised speaks volumes.
What happened recently to the Hydro 747 there is shocking, what if that had been a Lufthansa A340? But after a few small reports it's swept under the mat and forgotten about. Because it's Africa, and especially, it's Nigeria. "No wonder.." Do you think Hydro are getting any compensation from the Nigerian government?
There's a reason that Africa as a whole is in the sh1t state that it is in, and that is that the people who inhabit the countries can't figure out how to make sure they don't get screwed by the people who run these countries and the people who run these countries can't do it without screwing the people that inhabit them.