Expert rejects FG’s reasons for dumping Nigeria Air project, fingers shoddy build up
An aviation industry analyst, Dr. Ayo Saheed has rejected the recent explanation of the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on the reason for the suspension of Nigeria Air.
He said rather than accept the fact that it failed to carry Nigerian aviation industry stakeholders along from day one, government is telling us that investors failed them on their promises.
Mohammed had during the official opening of the multi-million dollar state-of-the-art building of LSG Sky, at the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), Lagos, on Monday, said Nigeria Air project was suspended due to lack of interested investors after a given period of waiting.
According to him, “Some of the investors the government had expected to partner with on the project were no longer forthcoming and the government never wanted to be the sole sponsor of the project”.
“If the understanding of government at the beginning was that the project might be self-financing or the project would be financed by investors, and you think that such a project can no longer be sponsored by investors, either because they are not forthcoming or such launching can no longer be viable, the government is at the discretion to take decision.
“The position of government in business is to provide the enabling environment, and it is not to become the sole source of finance or funding and, in addition, there is much more than funding in trying to get our national carrier. So, the Federal Government thinks this thing should be stepped down now until we get a better funding structure.”
Though the minister emphasized that Senator Hadi Sirika, the Minister of State for Aviation, carried along the government on the entire project, he was silent on why Executive Order 5 which was introduced to drive local content was skipped in designing the logo of Nigeria Air which was awarded to a Bahraini firm at a whooping cost of $600,000 about N183m.
