We have suffered an enormous tragedy, the death of 60 of
our children in the Sosoliso plane crash on 10 December.
Many of the parents and brothers and sisters of the
children were at the airport to welcome the children home
for the Christmas holidays. Their pain must be doubled.
One student survived and she is receiving treatment in
South Africa.
How does one react to this tragedy? Can one make any sense
of it? Why might God (who did not cause
this) allow this to happen? We are all searching for
answers even as we grieve. I was with many of the grieving
families in Port Harcourt, and I sense a powerful movement
beginning. It is a movement from grief, through
determination, to hope - hope for Loyola Jesuit College
and for our nation.
HOPE IS REBORN IN THE FIELD OF DREAMS.
My mind goes back ten years ago, to April 1, 1995, to the
Foundation Laying Ceremony here at the future site of
Loyola Jesuit College. The Honourable Walter Carrington,
United States Ambassador to Nigeria, uttered powerful and
prophetic words. On that occasion, here in Gidan Mangoro,
in the FCT, there were no buildings, only the beginnings
of roads, and construction equipment. As he looked over
the terrain, Ambassador Carrington spoke of "The Field of
Dreams" imagining what a wonderful educational institution
would soon be in place. He was familiar with Jesuit
education, and knew that Loyola Jesuit College would
become a center of excellence.
The College is built, and is now in its tenth year. For
the past three years in succession it has the best results
in WAEC examinations for all schools in Nigeria, for
several years, the most consistent performance in the
Cowbell National Secondary Schools Mathematics
Competition. Its graduates are in universities in Nigeria
and Ghana, the United Kingdom and in the USA, several of
them on scholarships.
In 1996, the opening year, less than 500 students took the
entrance exam and 100 were accepted. In April 2005, over
2300 took the entrance exam and 120 were accepted, totally
on merit, students at the top of their classes in many of
the best primary schools throughout Nigeria.
THE WORLD BEYOND LOYOLA JESUIT COLLEGE.
And yet! Ambassador Carrington expressed one major
concern. He pondered and wondered what would happen when
the students of Loyola Jesuit College left the beautiful
25 hectare campus. How would Nigeria receive them? What
kind of world would they enter? He asked: "What happens
when they go beyond these confines. Will the society be
nurturing and accepting of the values they learn here?" He
admitted that, as he looked beyond the horizon of the
future campus, beyond the "field of dreams", the vision
was much hazier.
Now we know. Now we see what can happen when they leave
our beautiful campus. The tragic crash of Sosoliso 1145 on
Saturday 10 December, 2005 is a frightening, terrifying
answer to the question and concern of Ambassador
Carrington. It is a terrible indictment of so many aspects
of life and systems in Nigeria. That Saturday morning, the
children were rejoicing. The term had ended. Christmas
carols were sung the night before, with a candlelight
procession. They would travel to be with their families
for Christmas holidays. But instead of a safe flight to
Port Harcourt, the plane missed the runway, hit the
culvert and scattered its cargo, precious human cargo,
over a distance of 1000 meters. Over 100 passengers,
including 60 beautiful, talented children of Loyola Jesuit
College, died.
What happened on December 10th was one terrible part of
the world of Nigeria into which these children returned.
It was a world where an accurate weather report and better
communications might well have instructed the pilot not to
land. It was a world where there may have been a
mechanical failure on the plane which caused the crash. It
may have been pilot error. Airport lights and electricity
might have guided the pilot in his efforts to land. We are
not sure, but something, something, went terribly wrong.
The immediate reaction to the crash at the airport was
another indicator of the trouble with Nigeria, the world
which our children wished to enter. "No water, no water!"
I heard several of the classmates of these deceased
children say this in public, at a gathering of families
and students affected by the crash.
"My classmates burned to death because
there was no water!" No water, in Rivers State,
where water is abundant, no water in the firefighting
equipment to put out the fire. Emergency services were
slow in coming. Many of the bodies of the
children were not badly burnt. They were still in their
red, or yellow, or green or blue uniforms, with little or
no physical damage. Doctors say they died of suffocation.
No ambulances were there. It is reported that a truck was
used to carry the bodies of the injured and the dead -
together. This might well have led to the avoidable death
of some of those seriously injured.
This is the world into which these children returned - how
prophetic were the words of Ambassador Carrington, ten
years ago! He was thinking of the world they would enter
when they graduated from LJC But they would die
prematurely. The 60 students of LJC who died? They were
the best and the brightest. In visiting the bereaved
families, we learn that one of them planned to be an
aeronautical engineer. One planned to be a doctor. Another
first year student wrote a beautiful poem to her mum three
weeks earlier, explaining how difficult it was to get into
LJC, but now that she was there, it was a rose, it was
paradise on earth. She admitted she was only 18th of 115
in the first series of exams, but with determination she
knew that she could and would do even better. One had a
full scholarship to another quality school, but turned it
down in order to study at LJC.
Other students and teachers remarked that the students on
the plane from Port Harcourt were simply among the best of
their classes. And each of the 24 classes at LJC suffered
at least one death. Sixty innocent children, 1/10 of the
LJC student body gone. The head boy and his younger
sister. The mother and father who lost all three of their
children, their only children. Another mother and father
who lost two children, and their bodies were never
positively identified. Each of the children has a story to
be told, but no longer a life in which to tell it.
I was in Port Harcourt two days after the crash, trying to
console the parents and friends. I was there for one week,
going from home to home, family to family, funeral to
funeral, burial to burial. To the mortuaries to assist in
trying to identify bodies. Seven bodies were eventually
buried in a common grave at the Port Harcourt Cemetery.
Seven lovely children belonging to six different parents.
DETERMINATION LEADING TO HOPE.
And yet! There is determination leading to hope. Hope is
being reborn. This was the major theme of the remarks of
Ambassador Carrington ten years ago, at the foundation
laying for Loyola Jesuit College. He spoke eloquently that
this was "a wonderful day to see hope reborn."
Determination leading to hope came through time and again
as I tried to console grieving parents. They reached out
and tried to console me. They explained that while they
lost 1, 2, or 3 children, that I as President of LJC, and
all the staff, had lost 60 children. I saw unimaginable,
deep, and great faith especially in those who suffered the
loss of their children. I knew and I tried to tell the
parents that they had done the best for their children,
and that we at LJC were trying to do the best for their
children. And yet, we all saw clearly that the systems,
the aviation industry, the nation let us down. The world
into which the children returned was not safe - it could
have been a road accident, or armed robbers, but this time
it was a plane crash.
What began to emerge as we went from family to family,
funeral to funeral, was the conviction that
this MUST NOT HAPPEN AGAIN. We owe it to the
nation, we owe it to these 60 innocent children, that this
must not happen again. I kept hearing again and again,
that these children cannot have died in vain.
Especially from those who suffered the loss of
their children, and from all the Loyola Jesuit College
parents, determination and hope was growing. We began to
see that it is our response, our responsibility. We, the
living, must make sure of this. They shall not have died
in vain.
We thought that these children in ten or twenty years
would have been the future leaders of Nigeria - the
Nigeria we want and hope for. But this was not to be.
Their lives were cut short. They are the innocents,
sacrificed, but a sacrifice that will lead to a better
Nigeria. We, the living - LJC parents, staff, and
classmates of those who died and those who were spared -
now have the challenge, the responsibility to bring about
what these children studied and died for, to be as all
students of Jesuit schools throughout the world are called
to be "men and women for others."
I began to see this determination and hope in the grieving
parents. They were reaching out to other parents, trying
to keep hope alive. One mother who lost two of her three
children visited other families and attended several
funerals She led the prayers and singing while seven of
the Loyola children were buried at a mass burial in the
cemetery. One father, who lost his two children in the
crash, was scheduled to be the main organizer of our
annual Interhouse Sports Day in a few months . He said he
would be there, he would be the organizer this year.
Several parents explained that their younger children
would study harder than ever to do well on the highly
competitive entrance exam to LJC. A grieving mother who
lost her daughter, at the end of a Service of Song reached
out and asked that a special collection be taken up to
assist another LJC student facing surgery (no connection
with our air tragedy).
Already we had been planning on how to celebrate our tenth
anniversary of quality education at Loyola Jesuit College.
In our visits to the bereaved, we continually received
confirmation that our decision to situate LJC at the
center of Nigeria, at the new capital Abuja, was the right
decision. We wanted to draw students from all over
Nigeria, students from all ethnic and all religious
traditions to come together, to bond together, to show
that all Nigerians can live, study, and work together.
This was and is our dream, and the dream remains with more
determination than ever. No one talked of turning back.
Now we must assure that transportation systems allow our
school to fulfill its dream and its mission.
We had planned to construct two additional buildings, one
of which will most likely now be named MEMORIAL
HALL, to honor the memory of the 60 students.
While these buildings are still needed, the real
celebration of our ten years now must shift its focus to
the building of a better, safer Nigeria. These children
must not die in vain.
If the avoidable death of 60 of
the best, of the future of Nigeria, does not touch the
hearts of those in authority, in government, then nothing
will.
Concerned mothers including many parents of LJC students,
have begun protests in Lagos and Abuja, demanding changes
in aviation, education and health care systems. Mothers
dressed in black, mourning the loss of children, even had
to endure tear gas on the streets of Lagos. In biblical
terms, we see the death of these children as the sacrifice
of the innocents, in order that new life, a new Nigeria
might emerge.
It is not only the aviation sector that needs cleansing.
It is all transportation systems. Our students should be
able to leave the peaceful campus of Gidan Mangoro and
travel in safety, in security, on good roads, or by air,
or rail, to every corner of Nigeria. The education sector
should be providing quality education at all levels in all
towns and villages of Nigeria. The health sector must be
able to provide emergency services in a time of crisis, as
well as affordable health care for all citizens.
KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE.
In a few weeks, 557 students rather than 617 will return
to Gidan Mangoro. We are planning now, with the help of
professional counselors, how best to begin anew, with
determination and hope. Having heard some of the
classmates of those who died speak and give witness to how
they feel, I feel confident that we will manage. As one
speaker said a few days ago, at a meeting of some of the
staff and students, we must "keep the dream alive; don't
let it die." Not only the dream of Loyola Jesuit College
with its motto "Service of God and Others," situated on
the field of dreams as Ambassador Carrington described it,
but the dream of a better, safer,
Nigeria. We owe this to the children who have died.
This will be our way to try to forge ahead and begin to
make sense out of this tragedy.
