Time to pay hostile African countries back in their coins is now

RECENTLY, the Nigerian born Secretary General of African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC), FunkeAdeyemo said the implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market Project (SAATM) would add $7.2 billion to the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), create 600 million jobs and grow air traffic in about three years to 5.1 per cent.

It is well known that SAATM is a project of the African Union established to create a single market for air transport in Africa. In other words, once completely in force, the single market is suppose to allow significant freedom of air transport in Africa, advancing the AU’s Agenda 2063.

Before the SAATM, other similar policies formed by the African leaders to encourage connectivity and free movement across the continent included the popular Yamoussoukro Decision adopted by most members of AU which went further to establish a framework to promote the liberalization of air transport services between the African countries and enhance fair competition between airlines from the continent.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is another flagship projects of Agenda 2063 of the African Union’s long-term development strategy for transforming the continent into a global powerhouse. As part of its mandate, the AfCFTA is to eliminate trade barriers and boost intra-Africa trade.

As good as these policies are meant to be, their practical implementation have continued to be frustrated by the so called African leaders for so many reasons.

All these trade policies are only for decoration as many of the leaders who are members of the signatories to the policies are not genuinely supporting the implementation of the policies due to inferiority complex and fear of the unknown.

It is no longer new about how many of these African leaders sabotage airlines from fellow African countries from operating into their airspace owing to the over protectionism of their own airlines in contradiction to the purposes of such policies.

Ironically, these leaders whose individualistic attitudes have been the bane of aviation growth in the continent are the same crying that international carriers are taking over their airspaces.

Many airlines from the continent that have the potential of creating seamless connectivity through air transport have been frustrated by the fellow African leaders through the archaic bureaucracies they put on the way of such African airlines.

A typical example of this retrogressive tendency is the ongoing frustration of Air Peace by African countries like Cote D’Ivoire, Benin Republic and Togo.

For years, Air Peace has been struggling to fly to Cote D’Ivoire without luck as the aviation authority of the country remained adamant with total disregard to the existing agreement signed with Nigeria apart from the trade policies.

These notorious West African countries in particular are unfortunately being allowed to get away with this repressive attitude while their airlines are enjoying free movements into Nigeria.

This selfish agenda of the African leaders was confirmed by the Chairman of Air Peace, Mr Allen Onyema at the AFCAC roadshow in Abuja where he lamented that

whilst Nigeria had freely opened its aviation sector to African countries, West African countries especially have continued to deny Nigerian carriers access to their countries.

While recognizing the positivity in the policies, Onyema however described the practicality of implementing them as lopsided and at the detriment of the Nigerian carriers.

Even though the Air Peace Chairman has given the Ivorian aviation authority up till tomorrow, April 28 to remove the obstacles put on the way of his airline, one obvious fact is that he alone cannot fight this battle without having the support of the government through the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

It is at this juncture that the Crucial Moment is calling on the incoming government to clip the wings of these African countries by paying them back in their own coins as Nigeria has been taken for granted all in the name of playing the ‘big brother’.

Above all, Nigeria should desist from rushing to sign these policies, which other fellow Africans are not sincere about. It is however sad that fellow Africans have joined in the raging hostility towards Nigeria despite the good brotherliness they enjoy here.

The burden of preventing the Nigerian airlines from the hostile attitudes of the African countries and the lip service they pay to the implementation of the different trade agreements should urgently be on the front burner of AFCAC.