67 Years in the Sky: Sanusi Lauds AMCON, urges FG to protect Aero Contractors as “National Treasure”

The Managing Director of Aero Contractors, Capt. Ado Sanusi, has paid a glowing tribute to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), crediting the debt recovery agency with saving Nigeria’s oldest airline from total collapse during its lowest point in 2016.

Speaking in his keynote address to mark the airline’s 67th anniversary, Sanusi recalled how AMCON stepped in, acquired a majority stake, and gave the carrier a vital lifeline.

He expressed deep gratitude to the corporation and particularly acknowledged the Receiver/Manager, Senator Adeniyi Ayodele Adegbonmire (SAN), whose steady leadership he noted has steered the airline through some of its most demanding years.

Emphasising the carrier’s historical weight, Sanusi stated: “Sixty-seven years is not just a number; it is a living memory carried by every Nigerian who learned to trust the skies because of us, and by every young engineer and pilot who cut their teeth in our hangars and cockpits.”

Addressing the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo (SAN), the Aero chief appealed for institutional protection for the country’s pioneer airline.

“I stand before Your Excellency today and say, respectfully but firmly: Aero Contractors is not merely an airline. It is a national treasure. I humbly appeal that it be recognised, protected, and positioned as such, to serve this nation for the next sixty-seven years and beyond,” Sanusi said.

While praising President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda for delivering visible infrastructure upgrades, particularly ongoing renovations at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Sanusi called on the Federal Government to extend that strategic focus squarely to the aviation sector.

He warned that Nigeria risks losing its competitive edge to regional rivals who are aggressively building aviation infrastructure targeted directly at the Nigerian market.

“Aviation is not simply a mode of transport,” Sanusi observed. “In nation after nation—in the Gulf, in East Africa, and across our own continent it is used deliberately as an economic catalyst. Even now, a new mega-airport and a major maintenance hub are rising just across our border, a few minutes’ flight from Lagos, built quite deliberately to serve the Nigerian market.”

He cautioned that without a swift, deliberate strategy, domestic infrastructure risks becoming underutilised while capital and jobs migrate abroad.

“If we do not respond strategically and soon, we risk our airports becoming ghost airports, our hangars falling silent, and our jobs and investments flying quietly across the border using our own population as the prize. Mr President, Honourable Minister: we are respectfully asking for a ‘Renewed Hope for Aviation ‘, a deliberate, strategic national focus on this sector alongside roads, rail, and power, so that Nigeria’s skies remain ours to command.”

Reflecting on the resilience that kept Aero airborne through decades of turbulence, Sanusi attributed its survival to unwavering faith in its purpose.

“We survived because we never stopped believing this airline deserved to live,” he concluded. “Let that belief carry us through the next sixty-seven years as we write the next chapter of our story.”

The airline began operations in 1959 as a charter and crop-spraying operation before becoming a vital lifeline to the oil and gas industry.

Its backbone was rotary-wing operations, supported by defunct foreign technical management that carried Nigerians to places no road could reach; through its training school, which has shaped generations of Nigerian pilots and engineers, the airline established itself as a flagship of the Nigerian airline industry.

In the year 2000, it launched scheduled passenger services covering most cities in Nigeria and the West Coast, making it the longest-serving scheduled carrier in Nigeria today.

On January 4th, 2018, after fourteen years in which no Nigerian Airline had performed a C-check on a Boeing 737, the airline’s Engineers, working from its hangar in Ikeja, completed Nigeria’s first indigenous C-check: the first of its kind not just in Nigeria, but across the whole of West and Central Africa.

Today, Aero Contractors is a fully integrated aviation enterprise with Scheduled Operations, Charter and Rotary Wing, Maintenance and Repair and Overhaul (MRO), and pilot training; the MRO now serves sister carriers across West Africa.

In 2016, when the airline’s fortunes were at their lowest, the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) stepped in, took a majority stake, and gave the Airline a second chance at life.

The MRO has upgraded to state-of-the-art smart tools with chips, new equipment, and an expanded hangar to serve the West and Central African markets.

Wole Shadare