Young Girl Injured In The Abuja Air Force Crash Recounts Her Ordeal As She Gets Scholarship

Young Girl Injured In The Abuja Air Force Crash Recounts Her Ordeal As She Gets Scholarship

Elizabeth Elijah was in the farm when death came calling.Unlike the proverbial August visitor, it bore no gift of courtesy or the perfunctory knock. On Friday, September 28, it arrived in the guise of the Nigeria Air Force (NAF)’s F-7Ni aircraft, crashing like a winged tenant of the sky, few metres from where the 15-year-old tilled the land.

Two fighter jets belonging to NAF crashed in Abuja during a rehearsal ahead of the country’s 58th Independence Anniversary.

It was learnt that the pilots had successfully ejected from one of the ill-fated aircrafts only for a Squadron Leader, Bello Baba-Ari, to die, from injuries.

According to Elijah, she arrived on the farm around 11a.m accompanied by her younger brother and a neighbour. “After working for some time,” her “brother complained of being thirsty,” so, they went to drink water at a nearby stream.

But while they returned to work on the farm, they saw an aircraft charging towards them from afar.

“We tried to run but the breeze of the plane pushed us and I fell. I noted that some fragments of the crashed plane has injured me in the leg. I could not stand to work and I started shouting for help. My brother and the girl had to come to my rescue; they struggled to remove the object that entered my leg,” she said, in an exclusive chat with The Nation.

According to the 15-year-old, she was bleeding profusely and her sibling and neighbour’s child, who were younger, couldn’t lift her and take her home. But just before she yielded to despair,

“a man came around who claimed he knew my father and offered to carry me home. Then my father took me a nearby hospital. They cleaned the wound and my father brought me back home but the pain was still much.

“After few hours the owner of the hospital came to our house and told my father that the chairman of Bwari Area Council has given an instruction that I should be taken back to the hospital to get my leg stitched. So they took me back and stitched the wound and after a while, I was taken back home,”she said, adding that, adding that apart from her leg, she also feels great pain in her hand and at her back.

Elijah’s travail would go unnoticed by the government but for a man who heard her mother, Victoria Elijah, narrate her ordeal to someone at the market, where she (Victoria) sold goods.

The man, according to Elijah, offered to help.

“Immediately, he called the Human Rights Radio and narrated everything to them, and the management of the radio station came to pick me at home around 11 pm alongside the management of the Maitama General Hospital,” said Elijah.

However, it took the intervention of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) FCT Call Center and it’s head, Jummai Ahmadu, in bringing the incident of the 15-year-old to the attention of the FCT Administration, two days after it occurred. The FCT administration immediately rushed her to Maitama General Hospital, for proper medical care.

Soon afterwards, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammad Bello, awarded her a scholarship “to any level” and ordered that her medical bills be taken care of by the FCT administration.

The victim, who hails from Kachia area of Kaduna State, but resides with her family in Chikoko village in Bwari Area Council of the FCT, was handed a scholarship form by directors cum representatives of the Universal Basic Education Board (UBEC), the FCT Scholarship Board and FCT Call Centre  for proper documentation, immediately after Bello’s declaration.

“The FCT Administration has decided to take care of all expenses for her education. The scholarship will take care of all her schooling. As soon as she is discharged from the hospital, the scholarship will commence,” said Dr. Adamu Noma, Director, FCT Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).

According to the UBEC boss, the FCT Administration granted her scholarship to university level and that they will be ready to foot her bills for as long as she can go in her educational pursuit.

He said the FCT Administration would be responsible for her tuition, books uniform, foot wears and any other things needed in school.

Confirming this, Ahmad Rani, Director FCT Scholarship Board said they were ready to foot the bills and follow her up.

The girl who could not hid her joy on the hospital bed said: “I am happy with the scholarship and how God has saved me from death. I want to study medicine. I appreciate the government.”

Elizabeth’s mother, Victoria Elijah was full also of joy and gratitude to God and the government for sparing her daughter’s life.

Further findings revealed that Elijah completed her primary education in Chikoko but she has been out of  school  for about five years due to her parents’ inability to fund her secondary education.

Things got so bad that her father could not afford transport fare from the village to see her in Maitama Hospital five days ago.

Few people would forget in a hurry, the episode that almost cost Elijah her life on Friday, September 28; while Elijah’s family were grateful that she survived devastation wrought by the NAF aircraft that crashed on their farm, the families of the deceased pilot and government rue the sad incident.

According to Islamic rites, Baba-Ari was laid to rest that same night at the Military Cemetery, Airport Road Abuja.

Among those who attended the burial were Chief of Staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, and Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Gabriel Olonishakin.

Others were Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Siddique Abubakar, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, hundreds of officers and men of the Nigerian Army, as well as friends and relatives of the deceased.

In the wake of the disaster, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, set up a board of inquiry, to investigate the accident, while President Muhammadu Buhari delegated the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, to visit the two surviving co-pilots of the crashed aircrafts, at the Defence Intelligence Agency Hospital, Abuja.