My wife was coming to Port Harcourt and sitting with a child returning from school in her uniform, she began to cry when she remembered our daughter used to come home like that –Okemini.
Just like yesterday, tears are still rolling down their cheeks. And there is no sign of abatement. The families of those who lost their loved ones to the crash are in agony. These are men and women perpetually tormented by pains and distressed by the loss of those they had placed their hopes on. They lost their precious children, husbands and wives on December 10, 2005 to the Sosoliso plane that crashed in Port Harcourt. And, there is no sign that the loved ones who perished will ever return. Sosoliso Flight 1145 left Abuja on that fateful Saturday afternoon for Port Harcourt but did not arrive with its cargo and passengers intact. The plane crashed and 61 students of the Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, wealthy and influential men and women, who were on board perished just as it made to land at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, Rivers State.
In many homes, the pictures of the dead children, their books, projects and excellent results in international and national examinations evoke more pains and misery in the minds of their parents and siblings. It is a situation where the parents continue to fight back tears each time they come in contact with anything that has to do with their ‘fallen heroes’.
Most of the parents are yet to come to terms with the trauma that rocked their lives and made them to drift like a poorly directed ship tossed about by a whirlwind. The upset sucked the blood of many and dwindled the fortunes of others, whose only child or most promising person in the family was consumed by the flaming fire that left most of the dead in very poor shape. Till date, many are yet to find the remains of their loved ones who perished in the crash while others made away with bits and pieces to the graveyard for burial just for the sake of having a grave or monument for future references.
Dr. Andy Ilabo, a Port Harcourt-based medical practitioner and her wife, Ify, who lost all their three children to the crash, are yet to fully understand why they had to suffer such a cruel fate. They were the worst hit by that tragedy. They tried to ward off tears as reporters confronted them for an interview on the occasion marking the first anniversary of the accident that claimed their ‘angels’.
The loss of the three-Chuks, Nkem and Busso at a go became a serious headache for the family which had put paid to the issue of having additional baby having given birth to the last of the three 12 years earlier.
“Our children were really lovely ones. Without blowing one’s trumpet, they were children any parent would want to have”.
What worries the couple most these days is that everywhere they turn in their house they come in contact with the items that were left behind by their children and that immediately reminds them of the great loss and rekindle the feeling of seeing and playing with them as was the custom before their demise.
“There is no day we do not come in contact with things our dead kids left behind”, Ilabor confessed.
The tragedy becomes more worrisome to the Ilabos when they recall that the wife had had a premonition about the crash and had warned that the children should not travel home with the aircraft that day. But as a loving and caring husband, the father reasoned that it would be too stressful for the kids to travel by land for over ten hours from Abuja to Port Harcourt and he opted to send tickets to them to fly.
He confessed, “In as much as it is agonising for us to lose our three children in one day, I have come to terms with the loss as the cross I have to bear. So it is with my wife. Yes, my wife said she had premonitions of the sad incident, but as Christians, when she voiced out those fears, all we did was to pray about them.
“All I will say is that after all our prayers and appeals to God that He should avert it and then God still allowed it, then it was completely beyond us. And He had a reason for allowing it to happen. He is God. He knows why.”
That position to leave the matter to God to handle appears to have been taken after the couple temporarily relocated from Nigeria to the United States of America where they met with trained counsellors who convinced them they still had a chance to become happy parents and that the demise of their children should also not be the end of their lives.
When they returned to Nigeria in May this year, the couple began to take stock of their lives and map out plans to rebuild the family. Their hope of having another baby has been rekindled since they are still within the childbearing age bracket.
“It is not very common to have one family lose all their children in one day. To God be the glory, we are surviving it and we will survive it. God’s purpose for us will be great and He will make us smile ultimately.”
Although the Ilabos lost all their three children and are still hopeful of restitution, others who lost less than that are even more devastated by the incident, which claimed the life of one of the most prominent Nigerian preachers, Pastor Bimbo Odukoya.
Nimi Amachree, an IT consultant, lost his 13 year-old daughter, Onwunari, to the crash and has not been the same ever since. She sits down and sobs daily as she remembers the fun and joy that her Onwunari used to radiate in her home.
“To tell you the truth, it has not been easy for us since our daughter died in that plane crash. In fact, when she was in school, we did not worry about her knowing that she was there. But now, she is like a constant reminder in our minds.
“Onwunari was a caring and loving child who wanted to be a paediatrician so as to render medical treatment to the society. But her lofty dream has been terminated by the crash just like that.”
To ensure that the dream of the youngster is not aborted, the Amachree family is planning to set up a foundation that would establish a children’s ward in Port Harcourt with IT facilities and some of the best surgeons to render medical services to the public.
Isaac Okemini, Special Assistant to the Rivers State Governor on Economic Matters, lost her daughter in the crash and the pains are yet to subside even as he tries to embellish it so as not to cause his wife and other family members to breakdown.
Okemini, a former General Manager of the Rivers State Government-owned Risonpalm Limited, says the death of her child has seriously shaken him and the family.
“As a man, I try to be strong but I know that the pain is there. And, it is a permanent pain, which cannot be removed by anybody. Sometimes I have to cry when I know that there is nobody looking at me.
“It is emotionally very traumatic. Losing a child is very painful but losing somebody under the circumstance that we did, makes it even more difficult to cope with.”
Like other 13-year old students in the LJC, Ibiso Okemini was in JS 3 and was one of the brightest stars the school had produced at that level and the parents were very proud of her academic prowess.
“My daughter was very very brilliant and creative. Apart from that, she was very focused and organised, indeed far more organised than children of her age.
“She wanted to be an architect and was always telling me, “Daddy, don’t worry I will design a very beautiful house for you.”
“The tragedy is a deep cut and our only hope is that time will heal our wounds. Even if time heals our wounds, the scars left by the death of our dear children will still be there.”
“The other day, my wife was returning to Port Harcourt and she was sitting with a child who was returning from school with her school uniform and my wife began to cry when she remembered that her daughter used to come home like that at the end of every school session.
“As a man, I try not to cry in front of my wife and children because I am the one trying to hold them. But when I am alone in my study, office or any quiet place, I cannot hold my tears especially when I remember those little things I used to do with my child.
Like a candle in the wind, the children went away with the crashed flying bird.
One year after, the parents are groaning with a double jeopardy. The airline, which collected their wards alive in Abuja and surrendered mangled bodies in Port Harcourt to the parents, is yet to pay the families the required insurance compensation, thus adding to the agony and devastation of the victims.
The management of Sosoliso Airlines initially made available N1 million as burial expenses to each of the 61 parents but the parents rejected the amount on the grounds that the airline did not show sufficient remorse for the loss of their children.
Okemini, who is the Chairman of the Port Harcourt Chapter of the Parents’ Teachers Association of the LJC, said the body was in court with the airline not just because of compensation but also to draw attention to the issue of carelessness in the aviation industry. He said the action was taken with the aim of putting an end to air disasters in Nigeria.
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