FG to hold 5% equity, entrepreneurs 46%, 49% foreign investors in new carrier

• New airline, Nigeria Air takes off April 2022-Minister

The long-awaited national carrier for Nigeria could see the light of day as the Nigerian government has set April 2022 for the take-off of the long-anticipated airline, Air Nigeria.

Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika made the disclosure on Wednesday after the week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The Minister stated that government would hold a 5% stake, Nigerian entrepreneurs holding 46% while the remaining 49% will be reserved for yet to be assigned strategic equity partners, including foreign investors.

He further noted that the national carrier, when operational, will create about 70,000 jobs for Nigerians.

Sirika was cleared to begin processes for the establishment of a private sector-driven national carrier which pace gathered momentum early last years six years after the idea was drawn up.

The entire cost of the projects for the revival of the aviation sector including the establishment of a private sector-driven national carrier would gulp N27 billion.

The entire project had a March 2021 timeline to be supervised by the Ministry of Aviation. The debate for a national carrier for Nigeria will never go away depending on the side or position one takes.

It is a position of naysayers and optimists. It would be recalled that Sirika on his verified Twitter handle, @ hadisirika, in February 2020, said: “The new approved Aviation Roadmap is on course,” adding, “we had investor conference yesterday as promised.”

He disclosed that bidders had been shortlisted, stressing that the remaining part of the road, which includes national carrier and Aerospace University is running with already business cases.

To show the seriousness of floating a national carrier, there are indications that Nigeria may have picked Egypt Air consortium and Ethiopian Airlines to set up an aviation leasing company as part of a government plan to overhaul the country’s aviation sector.

Sirika recently explained that any airline that will operate at that level must be such that would support the national economy with $450 million GDP for 200million people and must be equipped to compete favourably.

He said: “The international airlines that have dominated Africa, 80 percent of those airlines are non-African. In view of the AU Agenda 2063, the Single African Aviation Market, we thought that there will be an airline that will take up that challenge; that will take advantage of it and be able to provide services to our people.

Not a few believe that the establishment of a national airline will encourage the establishment of maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities in Nigeria, which can help block further capital flight and inevitably create jobs. Nigeria’s MRO facilities disappeared with the country’s national carrier, along with the $190 million that came with the facilities.

The third problem of not having a national carrier is the under-utilization of the Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) that the government has signed. These agreements allow international commercial air transport between territories.

Nigeria has signed 78 of these, but they favour other countries, partly due to the lack of national carrier in Nigeria to reciprocate.

A national carrier will make it possible for more players to fly competitive routes, which in turn will reduce the exorbitant airfares in Nigeria’s aviation sector.

Wole Shadare