Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, has said that the tragic implosion of the Titanic Sub will not be the last tragedy or accident to happen, and that regulations on expeditions similar to this must be put in place.
Akinyemi expressed his grief on this matter in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday. He said, “It is part of human nature. It is part of who we are that we will go where there are challenges to us as a human race. We will go to the moon because it is there, we are going to go to Mars because it is there, we will go to Venus because it is there. We will climb the Himalayas because it is there. And we will go to the depths of the sea to see the Titanic because it is there. This is part of who we are as Human beings. So, this will not be the last exploration, it will not be the last tragedy, it will not be the last accident. After all, rockets have exploded carrying astronauts to their deaths, it didn’t stop us.
“Therefore, I am not going to join those who are critical of the exuberance of the adventurists as they call them. I am critical of the non-regulation of these kinds of adventures. All our adventures are not regulated. Nobody is regulating how we go to the moon and what we do when we get there. Nobody is regulating how we go to Mars and what we do as we get there. There is a need, I will say under the United Nations Cover, for the world to meet and decide o binding conventions for how we do things and what we do.”
“My heart and my emotion goes out to the families and I pray that their souls rest in peace, but this will continue to happen, this is not the last time. So, there is a need for binding regulations, binding conventions under the United Nations.”
However, he acknowledged that the regulations may be hard to put in place due to the greed of people who wanted to keep minerals and materials for themselves as he said, “But the problem is there is so much wealth, we don’t even know how much, from the resources on the surface of the moon, Mars, from even the sea beds, and greed by this global north comes into it. They wouldn’t want any regulations that will affect their ability to rake up these minerals and rather than do it under the United NATIONS flag, they will want to do it under these artificial national flags that we have created from no sense but just circumstance and wars fought.”
OceanGate Expeditions, on Thursday, said in a statement that all five people on board, including company CEO Stockton Rush, are believed to be dead, after the missing submarine imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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