The Chairman of Air Peace, Mr Allen Onyema, who coincidentally is the Vice President of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), the umbrella body of the domestic Airlines, has accused the minister of spreading lies and playing the ethnic card in an attempt to favour foreign airlines against its local counterparts..
Sirika during his appearance on the Arise Television on Sunday while attempting to clear the allegations of deceit and poor packaging surrounding the purported national carrier and the presentation of an Ethiopian airline registered aircraft to Nigerians as the controversial carrier, indicted some key players in the sector.
In the cause of freeing himself from the self inflicted shambles, Sirika accused the former chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Aviation, Honourable Nnolim Nnaji of labeling the national carrier project as fraudulent because he could not get the 5 percent shares he requested from him as a shareholder in the airline.
The lawmaker has since fired back, referring to the minister’s accusation as spurious lies coming from a drowning victim.
The former minister during the interview equally took a swipe at the domestic Airlines, accusing them of incapacity and running away from competition.
He particularly singled out Air Peace, United Nigeria Airlines and the Chief Executive of Topbrass for attacks for daring to challenge the project in Court.
In his reaction on the same television station on Wednesday, the Air Peace boss asked Nigerians to thank God for not allowing the national carrier to scale through in view of the disadvantageous structure of the airline which concedes all the top management positions in the purported carrier to Ethiopians leaving Nigerians as second fiddle.
Onyema took a swipe at the former minister for singling out his airline and the other two who coincidentally are owned by Southerners while he mischievously left out the other Airlines that joined in the suit against the purported Nigeria Air because they are owned by people from the minister’s region.
According to him, apart from Air Peace, other Airlines that challenged the Nigeria Air project in court are: United Nigeria Air, Topbrass, Max Air and Amman.
“On Sunday when you asked the question, why Air Peace, he mentioned Air Peace more than fifteen times. We don’t know what Air Peace has done to him. He said it was not only Air Peace, and again United Nigeria Airline and he deliberately forgot to mention the other ones, are we trying to play the ethnic card? Thank God the leadership of Dr Abdulmanaf Yunusa Sarina has given the AON the teeth to bite, that man is a nationalist, Dahiru Barau Mangal is from Katsina State, he owns Max Air , Dr Abdulmunaf is from Kano State, he owns Azman, both of them, Air Peace, United Nigeria, owned by Professor Obiora Okonkwo and Topbrass, owned by Mr Rowland Iyayi went to court and we are still in court, so it’s not an ethnic thing, it’s a Nigerian thing. I want to congratulate Alhaji Dahiru Mangal, today he is launching his first Boeing 777 aircraft and yet we don’t have the capacity.”
Onyema, still reacting to Sirika’s accusation that the Airlines do not have the capacity to compete, described it as falsehood meant to demean the “Nigerian Airlines in favour of this charade he put up with Ethiopia. Even the former President Muhammadu Buhari at a Federal Executive Council meeting had shut down this national Air project at a time and one man is working in this country that it is needed.
“He told the world on television that we are low in capacity, that Air Peace was given the Dubai route to fly and said Air Peace is no longer flying now because they are low in capacity. Whoever advised Senator Hadi Sirika to come on television to defend the indefensible has not done him any good.”
According to Onyema, Air Peace airline stopped going to Dubai because of the outbreak of the pandemic and when Covid stopped we resumed. UAE decided to completely ban the issuance of visas to Nigerians, Air Peace had to stop operating to Dubai, Emirates stopped coming to Nigeria, neither Air Peace or Emirates is plying this route now. So why should the minister of government mischievously come on the television to spread falsehoods because he wants to paint the indigenous carriers black.
The same Air Peace when the whole world shut down during the lockdown in 2020 because of the Covid, Air Peace went to China on three occasions bringing back Nigerians, went to India twelve times to bring back stranded Nigerians. We went to Thailand to bring Nigerians back to their country, went to Malaysia to bring Nigerians back home, went to Indonesia, brought Nigerians back, yet we don’t have the capacity even in South Africa and the U.K. All I get from government officials is fight from every angle. We are not afraid of competition.”
“The court order has not been vacated; what they did on May 29 was contemptuous. Inviting a foreign airline to disrespect our judiciary is very unbecoming of our government officials. The case has not been vacated, it’s still subsisting, you don’t vacate by the words of the mouth. Application to vacate does not mean vacation, it could go either way.”
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