NIGERIA’S government has been told to release the much-advertised bailout funds to the aviation sector in order to save domestic airlines from extinction.
Making this appeal was the president, Rotary Club of Falomo, Rotarian Peter Nwaochie while interacting with newsmen at the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) shortly after presenting some wheelchairs to the organisation.
Nwaochie, an aide to former Minister of Aviation, Mrs Kema Chikwe, while acknowledging that every domestic airline in the country was struggling to make ends meet, hence the astronomical rise in air fare, lamented how the current pandemic ravaging the global space had greatly affected the aviation industry bringing it to a sorry state in Nigeria.
Sadly, according to him, nothing has been done in the form of palliatives to rescue struggling domestic airlines even as he urged that the promised bailout funds should at once be made available to the airlines and aviation sector so as to cushion the effect of the pandemic and other economic challenges.
His words: “We are living at an unusual time and the aviation industry is very strategic. It’s a catalyst for development in any modem economy, but in Nigeria today, aviation is in a sorry state. Airline operators are talking of palliatives, support. Nothing is being done.”
He commended the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for carrying out its oversight function diligently which he attributed to the zero accident record the country has enjoyed so far.
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