Nigeria Air: Once upon a country and its policies

Nigeria as a country deserves a special place in the Guinness book of records not because it’s a place with the largest concentration of black people on earth, but because it’s a place where things happen differently.

It is a wonderful place based on so many factors ranging from the fact that it is a country that is endowed with natural wherewithals but still have little  or nothing much to show for it, a country with resilient citizens who have developed ingenuine ‘shock absorbers’ to withstand any circumstance that comes their ways no matter how tough, a country where many people in government come up  with policies without carrying people along, a country where government officials rush to take decisions they later reverse, a country where government officials contradict themselves and many more.

There is no doubt that the atmosphere in the country’s aviation sector presently is that of anger and disappointment following the sudden announcement by the government last week that the much awaited supposed take off of the proposed national carrier, Nigeria Air  in December had been put on hold indefinitely.

In other words, the hope of meeting the yearnings of many Nigerians to have a national carrier fifteen years after the unpopular liquidation of the defunct Nigeria Airways is hanging in the air.

The announcement specifically made by the Minister of State for aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika after last week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja though very scanty and unconvincing, but the decision may not be far from the disapproval of the Economic Management Team (EMT) towards using public funds to float the proposed national carrier.

The decision of the present government to establish a new national carrier after the demise of Nigeria Airways was reasonable and welcomed by many Nigerians, but right from the day the decision to float the new carrier was made public, coupled with the style embraced by the team led by the minister which many key players in the sector faulted, the project was only running on injury time to fail.

Agreed that the minister and his team may have the genuine interest to float this airline which would have not only shore up the image of Nigeria in global  aviation community where smaller African countries like South Africa, Rwanda, Ethiopia are doing well with their national carriers flying around the world, but the greatest undoing of the team  was its failure to ignore the contributions of those who know the rudiments guarding and guiding the floating of a national carrier for that matter.

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Key players including airlines, professionals, the unions and many others questioned the mode the team intended to use to package the project with many asking the team to let Nigerians know the criteria it was adopting including the model, the would be technical and strategic partners, the ownership structure and the would be financiers All these requests were rebuffed by the team forgetting those asking the questions were only trying to prevent what has actually happened.

The team did not only keep the whole process to its chest but led many people to London in July to unveil the name, the livery of the carrier and its take off date to the whole world at the Farnborough Air Show.

With the unveiling of the name and livery of the new airline, to many people especially the traveling public, it was almost certain that the December date for the take off was sacrosanct while to others, it was a case of let’s see how this can happen in the face of all the unanswered questions including the lingering labour issues regarding the outstanding final entitlements of the former workers of the defunct Nigeria Airways then.

To cut the story short, the suspension of the proposed national airline has further gone to expose government officials in Nigeria including the past and the present as those who often rush to take decisions as if they are infallible only to embarrass the entire country. That is, a case of one step forward, seven steps backward.

While the minister and other government officials can take certain decisions on behalf of Nigerians  as the representatives of the people, however when it comes to critical decisions such as establishment of a national carrier, it is only calls for more thoroughness and transparency.

Even at times in life, in a precarious situation like the confusion the airline project created, the voice of ordinary Nigerian matters and should not be ignored as no one can claim to be an island for if the  government had carried majority of Nigerians especially those in aviation sector along without just narrowing the whole stuff to a few, it would have saved everyone the latest international embarrassment.