Dayo Emmanuel
Six years after the ill fated Dana air crash at Iju Ishaga area of Lagos State, the memory still lingers in the minds of friends, relatives of victims and of course residents of the crash site area.
A visit to the crash site at Iju Ishaga during the recent Eid-El-Kabir festival showed the level of maintenance of the site which is now a remembrance arcade. The site, despite being a remembrance arcade and a tourist site witnessed no visitors despite the public holiday.
A resident in the Iju Ishaga neighbourhood, Mrs. Funmi Falobi ,said the establishment of the remembrance arcade was necessary and a good way to familiarise children with history.
“It is a national disaster, I remember the then President Goodluck Jonathan, and then Governor Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah and other dignitaries were on ground at the site after the disaster happened,” Falobi said.
Continuing, she remembered Fashola’s promise of turning the site into a remembrance arcade. “I remember that Governor Fashola said it would be turned to a memorial place. It is a good development, a type of museum to educate the children.
They can learn a lot and ask questions.”
She also advised the government to intensify efforts in securing the national airspace in order to prevent future occurrence. “The remembrance arcade would also help the government to remember to secure the airspace and ensure the aviation industry is healthy enough to fly passengers because lives are precious and irrecoverable when lost.
“We don’t want to record this again so, stakeholders should ensure the health of our aircrafts and their handlers so we don’t see such calamities again,” she concluded.
One resident who is not too comfortable with the creation of the remembrance arcade in such a residential area is Gbenga Olonishakin, a resident of Fagba, Ishaga, a community not too far from the crash site.
According to him, the memory is enough torture to the living not to mention positioning the arcade among them. “I feel the government should have looked for a neutral site to establish an epitaph in the memory of the victims instead of establishing the monument in a residential area,” he said.
Olonishakin argued further that, “It is enough torture remembering the fearful incidence not to mention bringing the arcade and the name a of the deceased to the physical sight of the innocent and already traumatised residents.”
He observed that the site is not enjoying visits and utmost care earlier promised. “After establishing the arcade there has been no many visits according to the feelers I am getting from neighbours in the area.
Again, it is not in the best shape to the standard of the magnitude of a national disaster that it was, but let’s give it to the government for barricading the site from people who would have abused the place,” he said.
Meanwhile, two Air Force personnel were seen guarding the facility which is enough to secure the place from intruders.
It would be recalled that 163 people including passengers and victims on ground lost their lives in the ill-fated Dana flight 922 on Sunday 3rd June 2012.
Pastor Daniel Omowunmi owned one of the properties which the aircraft crashed on but for providence, he had not returned from church with his family during the hour of horror.
According to the cleric, not a pin was salvaged from six bedroom duplex, a bungalow, two ware houses, a printing press with education materials, four fish ponds, a jeep, furniture making machines. After all he had got destroyed, he was grateful to God for life.
“The only things I have left are the things I went to church with,” he lamented.
Nigeria has witnessed several plane crashes with the crash of Flight 922 being the deadliest involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 only second to the 22 January 1973 air disaster in Kano which claimed 176 lives.
Summary of the Dana air crash revealed that it occurred as a result of engine failure and subsequent pilot error.
