The w
orld, nay Nigerians got a rude re-awakening when the news of the failed attempt to bomb the Delta flight over Detroit filtered through. I remember sitting bolt upright from my bed on that Christmas day. I was savoring a quite Christmas somewhere in Delaware flickering through just the comedy channels and skipping the hard news channels. It was Christmas and I did not want to be bothered. The world can go to hell for all I care. But I was mistaken. The scream from my wife downstairs that I should switch to CNN immediately rattled me. She was not the CNN type.
She was more the Tyra Banks, Oprah and Discovery health type. I knew immediately it had to be big news. Sure it was. A Nigerian youth had just failed in an attempt to blow up a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. 23 year-old Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who boarded the KLM flight from Lagos Nigeria, has just been arrested after his suicidal attempt to blow up the Delta plane with over 200 passengers failed and resulted in fire gutting his thighs and the seat area where he sat. Thanks to the
sharp reflexes of some of the passengers, mother luck and above all God's intervention what I had thought was a beautiful white Christmas would have turned out to be a black Christmas and perhaps one of the worst Christmas days ever recorded.But that was not to be. I spent the entire day glued to the TV. I switched from one channel to another. Grabbed my laptop to monitor developments around the story. I wanted to gulp in as much information as possible. At first, I prayed there was a mistake somewhere and the said chap was not a Nigerian.Infact, I tried to find an explanation for the incident by trying to justify the fire as arising from the attempt of a cigarette addict or knuckle head attempting to have a quick smoke in flight.
However
, five hours after the news broke and more information became available, reality dawned on me. With that reality came sadness and an apprehension never experienced before for Nigerians and Nigeria. I was in the USA, working at the Voice of America when September 11, 2001 happened. My office was less than 5 miles away from Pentagon, so it came close home. I covered the aftermath then and continuously for almost 8 years reported on the US led war on terror. From Pakistan, to Iraq, to Afghanistan the terrorists roamed. On the streets of London and other European capitals they planned, plotted and struck. The USA never rested. It worked with other countries to curtail and destroy the terrorists. It became an engaging war and Nigeria was not left out in supporting the USA and the international community in confronting terror.
orld, nay Nigerians got a rude re-awakening when the news of the failed attempt to bomb the Delta flight over Detroit filtered through. I remember sitting bolt upright from my bed on that Christmas day. I was savoring a quite Christmas somewhere in Delaware flickering through just the comedy channels and skipping the hard news channels. It was Christmas and I did not want to be bothered. The world can go to hell for all I care. But I was mistaken. The scream from my wife downstairs that I should switch to CNN immediately rattled me. She was not the CNN type.She was more the Tyra Banks, Oprah and Discovery health type. I knew immediately it had to be big news. Sure it was. A Nigerian youth had just failed in an attempt to blow up a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. 23 year-old Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who boarded the KLM flight from Lagos Nigeria, has just been arrested after his suicidal attempt to blow up the Delta plane with over 200 passengers failed and resulted in fire gutting his thighs and the seat area where he sat. Thanks to the
sharp reflexes of some of the passengers, mother luck and above all God's intervention what I had thought was a beautiful white Christmas would have turned out to be a black Christmas and perhaps one of the worst Christmas days ever recorded.But that was not to be. I spent the entire day glued to the TV. I switched from one channel to another. Grabbed my laptop to monitor developments around the story. I wanted to gulp in as much information as possible. At first, I prayed there was a mistake somewhere and the said chap was not a Nigerian.Infact, I tried to find an explanation for the incident by trying to justify the fire as arising from the attempt of a cigarette addict or knuckle head attempting to have a quick smoke in flight.However
, five hours after the news broke and more information became available, reality dawned on me. With that reality came sadness and an apprehension never experienced before for Nigerians and Nigeria. I was in the USA, working at the Voice of America when September 11, 2001 happened. My office was less than 5 miles away from Pentagon, so it came close home. I covered the aftermath then and continuously for almost 8 years reported on the US led war on terror. From Pakistan, to Iraq, to Afghanistan the terrorists roamed. On the streets of London and other European capitals they planned, plotted and struck. The USA never rested. It worked with other countries to curtail and destroy the terrorists. It became an engaging war and Nigeria was not left out in supporting the USA and the international community in confronting terror.
