Airline Operators of Nigeria, AON, yesterday, threatened to sue the Federal Government over the multiple entries granted by the Federal Government to foreign airlines operating within the country.
The threat was issued by Alhaji Yunusa Abdulmunaf, President of AON, while speaking at the Q1 2022 Breakfast Business meeting organised by the Aviation Round Table (ART) in Lagos.
He said the organisation had decided to challenge the government via legal process, if the current policy on multiple entries to airlines was not addressed.
The AON President, who was represented on the occasion by Mr. Allen Onyema, Vice President of AON, said the body would in the next couple of days, meet with Sen. Hadi Sirika, Minister of Aviation, to deliberate on the issue. He expressed belief that the government would address the issue in the next 21 days, adding, however, that the body was not giving the government an ultimatum.
Abdulmunaf complained that billions of naira were being lost annually to multiple designations granted foreign carriers and warned that “ if the policy continued unabated, domestic airlines would die, while the foreign airlines would eventually take over the domestic market.
In His Words:
“All the foreign airlines that come into Nigeria, everyday the Central Bank Governor cries about the amount of money being repatriated abroad. We are talking about the scarcity of foreign exchange in the country, but the foreign airlines are removing billions of dollars every year from this country, and airlines in Nigerians have been hassled with lots of requests on how to repatriate dollars into the system. Where am I going to get it from?
“Yet we are creating more avenues for these things to happen by giving multiple destinations to these foreign airlines. All the foreign airlines that come to this country, maybe about 20 or 30 of them, have not been able to employ more than 150,000 Nigerians.
“We keep on badmouthing Nigerian airlines, forgetting that we are the architects of our own undoing. Air Peace alone employs over 4,000 people directly. It would take foreign airlines another 60 years to generate 4,000 jobs.
“Yet Air Peace has to beg to be given rights to build a hangar in its own country, it has no land in its own country. No land for its assets and passengers. It didn’t start today.“
Also speaking at the event, Dr. Gabriel Olowo, the President of ART, lamented that foreign airlines are gradually taking over the domestic market with continuous approvals for multiple entries for foreign airlines.
In His Words:
“The damages of multiple entries into Nigeria is huge. Britain for instance has 21 flights into Nigeria weekly. European Unions have 43 frequencies every week into Nigeria. Also the Middle East has 56 flights weekly into multiple entries into Nigeria”.
“As it is today, we have zero participation in the international sector as an industry and the domestic sector is eroded through multiple entries into Nigeria.”
Recall that the Minister of Aviation , Senator Hadi Sirika had once stated that multiple entries approval to foreign airlines is a capital flight against the country.
He said that this prevents the indigenous airlines from generating much revenues, rather grows the economics of foreign airlines.
“Technically,, it creates capital flight from Nigeria,” he had said.
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