Editorial

Nigeria Air controversy

AS the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari was winding down and the man at the helm of affairs was getting ready to hand over to the new Bola Tinubu administration, Nigerians observed the incommensurate and irrational haste with which former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, was seeking to flag off the operations of Nigeria Air even though there was a standing injunction against doing so. The more skepticism commentators expressed about the wisdom and propriety of commencing such a huge undertaking on the eve of the departure of an administration, and contra the law to boot, the more determined the minister and his team were to present Nigerians with a gift they were sure the nation could not do without.

Eventually, and despite mounting public outcry, on May 26th, three days before the expiration of his term of office, Mr. Sirika ecstatically welcomed the arrival of “the first Nigeria Air flight” at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, tweeting on his official handle: “We are here. To Almighty God be all the Glory. It has been a long, tedious, daunting and difficult path. We thank everyone for the support. This, by the will of God, will be for us and generations to come. Ya Allah make it beneficial for our country and humanity.”

As it turned out, and as the House of Representatives Committee on Aviation discovered, Mr. Sirika had in fact taken Nigerians for a ride. The unveiling on the last day of the Buhari administration was an exercise in deception, while the aircraft used during the ceremony was a chartered flight from Ethiopian Airlines which was promptly returned after the event. The committee’s resolution notes: “A careful review of the process indicates the exercise to be highly opaque, shrouded in secrecy, shoddy and capable of ridiculing and tarnishing the image of Nigeria before the international community.”

Based on its findings, the committee promptly directed the Federal Ministry of Aviation and its partners in the Nigeria Air project “to immediately suspend flight operations and every other actions (sic) with respect to Nigeria Air” and urged President Bola Tinubu to, “as a matter of urgency, constitute a high-level Presidential Committee to undertake a holistic review of the processes of the whole Nigeria Air project (sic), and advise government on the way forward.” Equally, the committee tasked the new administration with ensuring that “all individuals, or groups, or organisation (sic) involved in the controversial shenanigan (sic) named Nigeria Air takeoff are brought to book, prosecuted and sanctioned.”

These are worthwhile recommendations and we endorse them in earnest and without any reservations. From the look of things— and one does not need special powers to deduce this, such was the irresistible haste of the former Aviation Minister—it would appear that Mr. Sirika was either hiding something, seeking to gain something, or perhaps a combination of both. We hope that whatever it is, the high-level committee to be empanelled by the new administration will get to the root of it. As things stand, it is not just Mr. Sirika who has a case to answer; no matter how you splice and dice this, the reputation of former President Buhari is also under a cloud, for if, as the late Chinua Achebe famously wrote, the former Aviation Minister was the little bird dancing in the middle of the road, the Buhari administration was its drummer in the nearby bush. In his defence, though, Mr. Sirika has said that Nigeria Air was unveiled by private individuals and that a lawmaker who dubbed the transaction fraudulent had in fact demanded bribes from him.

We wish to note that none of this would have happened without the underlying, if misguided, assumption that Nigeria actually needs an airline and that having one is somehow needed for the purpose of national prestige. Even the House Committee on Aviation is under this false assumption, noting: “While the committee and indeed the parliament is not opposed to Nigeria having a National Carrier (sic), as a matter of fact having a National Carrier (sic) is highly desirable to us as a people and Nigeria as a nation…” When most people think of a national carrier, airlines like British Airways and American Airlines come to mind, the assumption being that these are owned by the British and American governments respectively. While British Airways was at a time state-owned, it is now a fully private enterprise, property of IAG, an Anglo-Spanish airline consortium. The United States does not own American Airlines or any carrier for that matter.

Nigeria does not need an airline to be taken seriously as a country; what it needs is to provide the environment for private airlines to function. After all, haven’t Nigerians been flying since the former Nigeria Airways formally ceased operations in 2003? The Sirika affair is precisely why it is not desirable for Nigeria to have a national carrier: its operations will be “highly opaque, shrouded in secrecy, shoddy, and capable of ridiculing and tarnishing the image of Nigeria before the international community.”

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