Media reports ‘played hand’ in father’s Lagos air crash death says grieving son
The family of a Nigerian man who died in one of the country’s worst air disasters last month said the media should share the blame for the death of their loving father.
Prof Celestine Onwuliri – husband of the current Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Viola Onwuliri – was one of the 153 passengers who died when the Indian-owned Dana Airlines’ MD-83 crashed into a business and residential buildings in Iju, near Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, on 3 June.
The flight, which originated from the Nigerian capital Abuja, also took the lives of as yet uncounted numbers of people on the ground.
In a moving tribute at the burial on 23 June, the late academic’s eldest son Emeka said his father, who was found after the crash with “his shoes, his clothes, wedding ring on his finger, and holding a Rosary”, had no trace of “burns and bruises” on his body.
He also poured scorn on the rescue services at the site and media reports that declared all passengers had died in the crash, when the preliminary autopsy of his father confirmed that he died on Monday 4 June, a full day after the incident.
“This brings great sadness that our Nigerian rescue could not act appropriately,” he said. “The media also played a hand in this reporting very early that everyone on the flight was dead even when the rescue had not opened up all sections of the crashed plane.”
He said the report put his family off making their own rescue attempts “that might have saved” his father.
He added: “We are not sure that what happened was God’s will, but we know that God permitted it. And so we believe that God knows the best.”
Prof Onwuliri, who chaired the National University Commission’s standing committee on private universities, was on an official business trip on behalf of commission when the disaster occurred.
