Reminiscences With Captain Dele Ore
Captain Dele Ore, who clocked 75 years on January 10, 2018, was one of the young pilots that put the Nigeria Airways on the world aviation map with reliable flights. Ore commenced training as a pilot at 21and rose rapidly through the ranks. He had the rar
Did any event during your childhood influence your romance with airplanes in any way? At the age of eight, in a little village called Esie in Kwara State, where I was born (I later found out that the route - Lagos to Jos - passes over the village) I had a dream I was flying a green-white-green aircraft over the village, over my father’s farm. I was seeing the vegetation, the animals, birds flying away, and all that. Of course, the dream didn’t mean anything to me then.
At the Government College, Ibadan, we had the opportunity to be exposed to the American and Canadian Peace Corps members who were on an exchange visit. Before we sat for the school certificate examinations, we had already been taken through the theory of light by these expatriates. And I had also become interested in airplanes, mainly military explorations. I was also exposed to the British Council Library in Ibadan, where I used the holidays to go through stories on space explorations.
I became interested in military aviation, hoping that I would become a fighter pilot in the Nigeria Air Force. Unfortunately, Nigeria had no Air Force at that time. But my principal, D.J. Bullock, knew of my interest because, as a sportsman, I was always with him in his car. And he would take me out to one competition or another.
I also had the grace to have been given a scholarship. Of all the kids in 1957/58, I was among the first four or six who were given scholarships by the then regional government. That scholarship came handy because my parents could not have been able to afford one naira to send me to secondary school. But that scholarship could not be carried over to Higher School Certificate (HSC), where I was doing Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, so I had to withdraw.
But the principal was very sympathetic. As I could not afford to pay the school fees anymore and was about leaving the school, not knowing where to go next, he kept assuring me that he could work out a way for me to go to England and be enlisted into the Royal Air Force. He had a friend at the UAC, Col Dennis Sander, the company’s general manager who, as fate would have it, saw an advertisement calling for application for training as professional pilot at the Federal Flying School, Lagos. So I applied, using his address in Ikoyi. And the journey started from interview to aptitude flying test, medical
test and all those things. By the Christmas eve of 1963, we were on our way to the United Kingdom, after doing some flying here.
The training started on my 21st birthday, on January 10, 1964. We used the training to have the technical study of the aircraft that Nigeria Airways had because that was the ultimate aim. The Federal Government of Nigeria offered scholarship for the training, and their only option was for us to work for the only government airline in existence at that time.
After the training, my employment with the Nigeria Airways commenced on April 14, 1964.
I was flying the DC-3 aircraft when, by a stroke of luck again, the Director of Operations, Captain Harden, picked me out from nowhere and gave me a conversion training on an aircraft called the AZTEC, which was a five-seater meant to be flown by pilots being groomed to be commanders to fly VIPs and drop diplomatic mails across the West African coast. But here I was, a young 23-year-old boy picked out for such a huge responsibility. I was so proud to be selected. From there, the Director of Operations gave me the opportunity to build up my hours.
So anytime I wasn’t flying, anytime I was off duty, I could just go in there, fill a flight plan, obtain authorisation and use the aircraft to fly locally and build up my hours.
Did you, up to that stage, ever remember your dream as an eight-year-old flying the national carrier?
One day, I found myself doing a flight plan, exactly repeating the dream I had when I was an eight-year old. I flew that GreenWhite-Green aircraft over my father’s farm, exactly as it occurred in my dream. By the time I was 26/ 27 years old, I was already a commander. By the time I was 29 to 30, I was being introduced into management in charge of one fleet or another. Thereafter, I became a chief pilot, and shortly after, director of operations. Within a short time, I had moved from flying that small aircraft, the DC-3, to flying the Boeing 707.
Progressively, I was appointed to be in charge of the Presidential Fleet; we called it Special Flight or Cabinet Flight Unit. Then, too, the Gulfstream 2 aircraft was being introduced. In fact, I had to stay with the aircraft, where it was being manufactured to ensure it was constructed to our specification. By the time the manufacturing of the aircraft was completed and we had to fly it back to Lagos, I had already qualified to be an instructor on it. I went on from there to fly bigger aircraft like the DC-10.
Could you remember some of the VIPS you flew on the five-seater aircraft?
If I look at my log book, the names are there. But I can tell you that in 1966, as the war was about to break out, there was a VIP I was called upon to fly. That was the president of the World Council of Churches, Sir Akanu Ibiam.
I was so proud to have been called upon to do that, such that I got the aircraft ready fast. He was coming from Portugal to Biafra but the aircraft could not land. They diverted it to Lagos and he was given a VIP ride to Dodan Barracks. The aircraft was going to cause a diplomatic problem with Portugal, so it was allowed to go but Sir Ibiam was in Lagos. He worked closely with Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu during the Biafran struggle. When Federal Government officials decided that they would take him to Enugu, they called me to fly the AZTEC to take him there. It was a single-pilot type of aircraft. Only me and him were inside. When he showed up to board the aircraft, he looked at me and just went back.
They asked him, “Your Excellency, what happened?” and he said, “The aircraft is too small.” But in fact, what he thought was that the pilot was too young to fly him. They had to get the DC-3, which I was also qualified to fly but couldn’t do at that stage because it required a commander, and I was not yet a commander. To get a commander became problematic. In the end, they called on a white man who was off duty, relaxing at the swimming pool side of the Airport Hotel and was half-drunk, to fly that aircraft with me. But I virtually flew that aircraft alone because the white man was just there as a figurehead. I took Sir Ibiam to Enugu, dropped him and came back to Lagos.
At what point were you called upon to command the Presidential Fleet?
I was involved with Capt. Paul Tahal who was in charge. I was his co-pilot. By the time he was stepping aside, he recommended me and I just saw a letter stating I was the pilot in charge of the Cabinet Fleet. I must have been 29 or 30 years old then. I did that job for a while until I had to move to a higher fleet.
How many Nigerian presidents did you fly?
As a co-pilot I was involved in flying Gen. Yakubu Gowon. When Gen. Murtala Muhammed came to power, I flew him, and that extended to flying Olusegun Obasanjo. The person who was always on the move was Major-Gen. Joseph Nanven Garba. There is a book I am putting together, ‘The Jet Proportion to Diplomatic Soldiering’, in honour of Major Gen. Garba. The only other person I flew on a bigger aircraft was Vice President Alex Ekwueme.
Then, of course, I flew many foreign presidents, cumulating in a national award given me in the Republic of Mauritania. I flew the prime minister of Guinea, Sekou Toure, who also gave me the highest national award in Guinea. I also flew President Agostinho Neto of Angola, to the extent that the Angolan government wrote to the Nigerian government seeking its consent to give me an award. Till today, the Nigerian government has not replied. Why? That is a question I have been asking. One may also ask why I never got an award from the Nigerian government - no national award, no recognition. A book, the story of my life I titled, ‘The Learned Commander’ revealed the vital role I played in the Nigerian civil war.
I challenge anybody in the Nigerian Air Force that did more than I did during the war to say it. They cannot pretend not to have the records.
I should have launched my autobiography on my 75th birthday in January this year, but the government refused to pay me my final entitlements. So where do I get the money to do it? Even the first book I published, ‘Issues in Nigerian Aircraft Accidents’, published in 2010, my contribution to the industry, I didn’t sell, but those people who came for the launch were able to offset the cost of printing and all that. I would have hope if the government could just pay what it is owing all the retirees of Nigeria Airways.
What memories do you have flying top Nigerian leaders?
I enjoyed what I was doing. It was fun. You had a few people who treated you like friends. Anytime you flew somebody like MajorGeneral T.Y Danjuma, a well-disciplined man who was always very appreciative of what you were doing; it was joy. Anytime you also flew Major-Gen. Joe Garba, you would just love him. These people I mentioned, when they had their flight for 10 o’clock, by that 10, the flight was ready to go.
But there were a few people who would just look at you as bloody drivers. It was, ‘just keep driving’. They would delay you for three, four hours, causing fatigue to the crew, and when they finally arrived, they would not bother to apologise. They would just go inside and sit as if you didn’t matter. One day, I found myself doing a flight plan, exactly repeating the dream I had when I was an eight-year old. I flew that GreenWhite-Green aircraft over my father’s farm, exactly as it occurred in my dream. By the time I was 26/ 27 years old, I was already a commander. By the time I was 29 to 30, I was being introduced into management in charge of one fleet or another
Then there were the sycophants who surrounded the leaders who would tell lies that they had briefed us about change of departure to protect their own jobs while portraying you as irresponsible. Generally, most of the leaders I flew were warm, and it was very nice to have been associated with them.
Piloting is such a risky profession. Were there occasions you had a close shave with death?
There were many. In flying, you either have an accident, a serious incident or an ordinary incident. Luckily, I never had an accident, though I had some serious incidents. The Nigerian Air Force, as far as 1963 to 1967, didn’t have the capability on very sophisticated aircraft. It was the Nigeria Airways’ DC-3 aircraft - seven of them - that were given to them. So we (Nigeria Airways) were working with them. I could have been in the first or second set of Nigerian Air Force officers. Most of those who drifted to the Air Force actually made efforts to gain admission into the flying school then.
Then the western world was not ready to sell equipment to Nigeria, so anti-aircraft guns had to be bought second-hand through Egypt because nobody would sell directly to us. A DC-2 was assigned to go to Cairo to bring the guns. I am bold to say I was the only Nigerian that was willing to go and bring it because many were afraid the aircraft could be brought down by the Biafrans during delivery. And that nearly happened.
The anti-aircraft gun successfully arrived in Nigeria, and the next day I was assigned with an Indian to deliver the aircraft in Makurdi. The Biafran Intelligence was so strong that they knew the movement of every Nigerian aircraft because their informants were all around Benin. As we were landing in Makurdi, Biafran jet fighters suddenly appeared and started shooting. The Nigerian soldiers on ground were in camouflage; they dashed out of sight and disappeared. We (the flight crew) were in white uniform, except one nursing sister, Major Adams, who wasn’t.
Immediately, a few bombs came down. We were lucky the Biafrans missed our aircraft, which had some bombs on board. But the Indian who was with me had experience in
the India-Pakistan war. He just grabbed a gun after first shouting at us to remove our uniform and started shooting into the air. When they saw the burst of a gun, the Biafran aircraft fled.
Within five minutes that we tuned in our radio, the Biafrans were already announcing that they had levelled the whole of Makurdi, that they had destroyed the Nigerian aircraft and killed all the crew and all that. This mark on my face is from that attack. A part of the bomb hit me and my face was bloodied, but the nurse patched me up and we patched the aircraft up and flew back to Lagos. In Lagos, I was driven to the Yaba Military Hospital, where they stitched me up.
But that didn’t make you an active participant in the civil war; did it?
In my autobiography, I have a chapter, ‘My Role in the Nigeria Civil War’. There was a time we were flying and were asked to land in Enugu to get military clearance first before we could go on to Calabar or Port Harcourt. On this occasion, the weather was so bad that we couldn’t land in Enugu and fuel was getting low. The only place we could go to was Port Harcourt, but the air traffic controller kept saying, “Look, do not go to Port Harcourt, it is at your own risk; you would be arrested.”
But I had no choice. Benin was shut at night. So I landed in Port Harcourt and was arrested. They were going to seize the aircraft. My former colleagues who had worked with me at the Nigeria Airways but were then with the Biafran Army came to the airport and were mocking me, saying, “Yes, we got this one.”
But when we all got to the Biafran High Command, their leader (I wouldn’t know whether it was Ojukwu) asked, “Who is the pilot?” and they answered, “Dele Ore.” I just heard, “Let him go”. That was how I was freed. Apparently, they appreciated how I had, a few months earlier, evacuated Igbo people from Kano. I had ferried 110 passengers on a 40-seater aircraft. If I hadn’t taken the risk of overloading the aircraft and decided to drop them in the right number of batches from Kano to the East, one flight after another, nobody can be sure of what could have happened because the situation was very tense. Apparently, the story went there, about what I did, and because of that they allowed me to go. Otherwise I would have been in jail throughout the war, or could have been killed.
We were later flying to war zones like Calabar and Port Harcourt to evacuate the wounded to the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. We were making shuttles. We would carry so many people and half would be dead before we got to Ibadan. We were also carrying food and ammunition to the war front. The Black Scorpion, Col. Benjamin Adekunle, was always appreciating what we did as he would unzip a pair of boots up to his thigh and bring out either pounds or any currency and give to us.
Do you have any apprehension about some current developments including killings across Nigeria?
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, we don’t learn from our past. You cannot rule out a war in situations like the one we have put ourselves. But we must continue to warn the people that if they had ever witnessed a war, they would prevent another one from happening in Nigeria. No country can afford the type of war that we went through twice and survive. If it happens again, that is the end of Nigeria.
Back to the aviation industry, Nigeria used to be a leader in African aviation, especially in the days of the Nigeria Airways. At what point did our industry begin to nosedive to the present abysmal level?
You just reminded me of an issue I didn’t include in my book. I was a director of operation when the Boeing Company of America came to Nigeria to invest in what we call Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul
(MRO) facility and they were taken to Dodan Barracks to discuss with officials of the aviation ministry and the government. After about one week, they came to my office and said, “Dele, we gonna head East.” I asked, “What do you mean?” And they said, “We cannot get through to Nigeria. It is not our policy to do dirty business because we believe we have the best equipment in the world. Our policy is transparency; we kick against corruption. We cannot do what your people wante us to do here.”
When they headed to the East, they met Ethiopia. What is keeping Ethiopian aviation growing till today is the mere fact that what Nigeria lost, Ethiopia gained as Boeing established the maintenance base for them. Part of what is killing Nigerian carriers today is lack of a maintenance base. Until just last month that the Aero maintenance base was approved, we couldn’t cope with one-tenth of our requirement. And that can’t even cope with anything bigger than the 737 aircraft.
So we lost it, and that has been affecting our aviation industry and business till today. Up till recently, we used to have an aviation minister every 13 months, with every minister coming in with his own policies. So policy inconsistency is also responsible for the woes of Nigerian carriers. And until we had the luck of having Dr Demuren as the Director-General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), we were just groping in the dark. We didn’t know what we were doing. Before his time, planes were crashing per second. After he came in, everything was stabilized, and for two years, there was no accident. Before the situation could be improved upon, they conspired to remove him because he was not dancing to their tune. I also flew President Agostinho Neto of Angola, to the extent that the Angolan government wrote to the Nigerian government seeking its consent to give me an award. Till today, the Nigerian government has not replied
There were so many conspiracy theories about what killed the Nigeria Airways before former President Olusegun Obasanjo finally liquidated it. What would you say was responsible for its demise?
The Nigeria Airways was liquidated because of what I will describe as ‘bad belle’. The Nigeria Airways was an ongoing concern which assets were bigger than its liabilities; yet they went ahead to liquidate it despite several other options. There was the International Finance Corporation option, which sought to provide a bailout for the airline, but they threw that away. They deliberately shunned that option. Some people wanted the Nigeria Airways dead so they could set up their own airlines. As they have discovered, those shoes are too big for anybody to step into. I will not say more than that.
What is your regret as an aviator?
In my book, I listed 17 regrets. I regret so many things. There was an aircraft we called the ‘Spirit of Courage’. I regret that we were duped and that aircraft still didn’t belong to us.
The country was duped?
Of course, we were duped many times trying to purchase aircraft. There were deposits we paid, to no results, and many other cases. My last flight was a mutiny against me, but I left voluntarily before some people would cause an accident with me in command. I have several regrets, but let’s wait for my book to come out.
The Minister of State for Aviation promised that the final pension of Nigerian Airways retirees would be paid before last Christmas…
(Cuts in) We were expecting the money by Christmas of 2016. Many people were dying. During his campaign, the president said government would pay the money. And all the talk last year was enough to make us believe that we would be paid during the Christmas of 2017. But as I speak, I don’t know what is happening. We are talking of our right. That is what I had worked for all my life, so it is not a favour if they pay me my gratuity. I am entitled to it.
If the good wish of all of us should be extended to establishing a new national carrier, they must first pay us our gratuities, otherwise that would be an exercise in futility. The blood of many of our colleagues who had died, needing just N5,000 to treat themselves of illnesses arising from poverty that could have been avoided if their monies had been paid, is crying for vengeance. It is a terrible curse on this country.
The African Union recently launched the Single African Air Transport Market to fully liberalise air transport in Africa, and some stakeholders, especially the airline operators of Nigeria, are against it. What is your take on this?
The airline operators of Nigeria are dreamers. You are talking of something that can allow you to re-plan, to be able to compete, something that has been an international treaty since 1988. The Yamoussoukro Declaration is what we are just discussing now when Nigeria is supposed to be leading it. We didn’t even lead with the Banjul Accord, which is just for the West Coast here. We failed. That is why they referred to us as big for nothing. I support what happened in Addis Ababa wholeheartedly. And what can those speaking against it do to stop it?
Is Nigeria a signatory to it?
Of course, it is a commitment. We are actually leading it. Our minister is part of the committee to ensure that it takes off without any hitch. They raised key issues of a harsh operating environment, lack of access to hard currency, and many others, which have limited their capacity to grow. We have domestic issues but they do not vitiate the fact that the Single Air Transport Market is a good thing we must embrace.