Exactly eight years ago today, 61 students of the Loyola Jesuit College (LJC) were headed home for the Christmas holidays when the Sosoliso aircraft conveying them crashed in Port Harcourt.
These students, who had left their school and friends less than two hours earlier, were barely minutes away from re-uniting with their families when the tragedy struck. The crash claimed all the lives on board, except two (one LJC student and another passenger). It was an overwhelming catastrophe that cast a shadow in the lives of everyone involved and the nation as a whole.
The scope of that tragedy and the sharp poignancy of its hurt are sufficient triggers to provoke a crisis of faith in those less toughened by the imperatives of love and deep belief in the omniscience of God. But even when we cannot understand why those 60 children were taken away from us, we have taken solace in God’s words in the Bible that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways.
Today, eight years may have passed and the scars are gradually healing but we will never forget our children who left us in the most heart-breaking manner. Yet while they live forever in our hearts, we want their memories to enrich the lives of others as we demonstrate that abiding bond between parents and children that is aptly captured in the motto of the LJC PTA: “For the sake of our precious jewels”!
However deep our pain as parents, the tragedy of December 10, 2005 was not only for the PTA but also for the LoyolaJesuitCollege.
Having 60 promising lives, 10 percent of its entire student population, cut short in one fell swoop, was too much for any school to bear. Yet out of that tragedy, a new JesuitMemorialCollege has emerged, on the same ground that our children perished in Port Harcourt. Also, there is now an annual memorial drama by students of LJC Abuja in honour and memory of their departed senior colleagues.
At a moment like this we cannot but draw strength from the courage and resilience of Kechi Okwuchi, the only Loyola Jesuit College survivor of that tragic incident, who continues to remind us of the obligations that the living still owe the dead. Kechi experienced the tragedy and lives it every day but she has refused to allow it to define her and the future that is still within her reach.
However, as we mark the 8th anniversary of this tragedy today, our unceasing prayers go out to the parents and guardians of our departed 60 children as well as the Port Harcourt branch of the LJC Parents Teachers Association, the management and staff of Loyola Jesuit College, and indeed all Nigerians.
For reasons beyond our knowledge those beautiful children came to us; and for reasons also beyond our comprehension, they left us. And today in their memory, we have decided to express gratitude instead of grief at the privilege of experiencing their warm companionship. However fleeting their friendship and love, gratitude is a preferable healing force and the path of positive faith. Certainly, those young spirits would wish this path for us because to live forever in the hearts of those who bore and nurtured them is really not to die.
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