Former Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Hadi Sirika, has said some domestic operators, under the aegis of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), caused the collapse of the Nigeria Air agreement between the federal government and Ethiopian Airlines.

Sirika argued that while the agreement, which passed through the Federal Executive Council, FEC, and the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, ICRC, was transparent, Air Peace, Azman and United Nigeria Airlines hindered the establishment due to the limited stake Nigeria would have had.

Speaking on Morning Brief, a Channels TV programme, the former minister, who promised to write a book on his time in office, urged the citizenry to invoke the Freedom of Information Act, FOI, to investigate claims that the agreement was fraudulent.

According to him, he formally sought partnership with Ethiopian Airlines because no domestic carrier had the capacity to compete with the mega carriers.

His words: “I think I was on either Channels or Arise during the controversy of Nigeria Air. First and foremost, it was a public private partnership, PPP, which was regulated by ICRC, which gave a certificate of the OBC and ABS, which participated actively in the process. It was not our process.

“It was the process of ICRC. It was not a bad deal. I read in the papers that I spent N100 billion or thereabouts, and it was lost in the process. That was a lie. Between 2015 and 2023, the total budget for the national carrier was N5billion. The total amount released was N3 billion. I left there with over a billion naira.

“Nearly a third of the N2 billion spent went into the consultancy that was used during the time and the balance of the money, of course, into staff that were hired. By the way, we went through every single step of the ICRC process, and we got it to the end.

“We had an airline, but some people (Air Peace, United and Azman) went to court to say we cannot establish an airline where we take five per cent. That was what stalled it. If there was no court case, and the government that came in had pursued the court case, by today, we will have an airline.

“Talking about Ethiopian Airlines, 95 per cent of all airlines operating within Africa are not African. British Airways, Qatar, Air France and others. Ethiopian Airlines has been running an airline for 79 years. They have made a statement of how to run an airline, and they are Africans.

“They came to partner with us to be able to open up the world to us. Today, the price of a ticket from Abuja to London is more expensive than Accra to London, and the reason is because we do not have a formidable airline with the capacity to continue to do so.

‘’We have seen Air Peace before, we have seen Azman before. When I say we have seen them, I mean we have seen Kabo, which was much bigger than all of them. We have seen Okada, Arik. They all came and went. What is amiss is the capacity they need to build to compete with people who have 250 aeroplanes.

“I do not think an airline that has five aircraft can compete in the global market with well-established carriers and expect to operate and make profit.

‘’To sum it up, all we did to establish Nigeria Air we had taken to the final step before these people now went to court. There was no fraud. If there was, they would have said it.

“If the minister (current Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development) is saying it is a bad deal, Nigerians should invoke the Freedom of Information Act, FOI, to go to the Ministry of Aviation and get the document. They should also go to ICRC to get the document and establish where the fraud is. It was not a fraud, it was a lie.

“This airline (Nigeria Air), whether now or in the future, will come to be because we did not arrogate to ourselves the knowledge of aviation alone.

“When the bid (for Nigeria Air) happened transparently, in which some of those airlines participated, Ethiopian Airlines won fair and square.” (Vanguard)

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