Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, has explained that documents of agreements on the failed Nigeria Air project were signed by Hadi Sirika, the former minister of aviation.
In a viral video, Festus Keyamo exposed some pages of the
documents, explaining parts of the deed of agreements signed by Sirika and the
Ethiopian government.
According to Keyamo, the agreement document showed that a
foreign airline would have taken over Nigeria Air.
He stressed that the Nigerian government had no regrets
about ending the agreement with Ethiopian Airlines over Nigeria Air.
Keyamo said, “You will be shocked if you look at this
agreement. What it simply says is that a foreign government should come and
take over our national carrier. Ethiopian Air was the single major shareholder
in that deal. It is the same thing they did in Togo with Asky. We cannot be
Togo. We are big and ambitious.
“We cannot give up our aviation ecosystem to another entity.
What would have happened is that the Ethiopian government would now be the
complete beneficiary of all our Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) routes.
“A national carrier has first priority over all the BASA
routes we have negotiated all over the world. If we give them all the routes we
have suffered to negotiate, where will all those profits go? It is not
Nigeria.”
This comes as Keyamo explained that Nigeria did not lose any
foreign direct investment by not agreeing to the terms of Nigeria Air.
He said what the Ethiopian government was going to do was to
get wet-lease aircraft and fly them as national carriers, with all the profits
going to Addis Ababa.
“The CEO of Nigeria Air would have been an Ethiopian, the
financial officer Ethiopian, the director of operations Ethiopian, and all
other key positions would have been reserved for foreigners. That is not a
national carrier.
“In the document, it also says the people that will run
Nigeria Air will not pay any tax to the Nigerian government. They are not also
building any investments in the country. The documents also say Nigeria will be
the guarantor of any loss they suffer here,” Keyamo further explained.
Recall that in May last year, Keyamo announced the
indefinite suspension of the Nigeria Air project.
While there are reports that N85 billion was spent on the
Nigeria Air project, the former minister, Sirika, clarified that it was N3
billion.
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We can see what the former minister of Aviation did on the National Carrier acquisition, he had the audacity to give Ethiopia free access to own Nigeria National Airlines. This is insane for a minister of the federal republic of Nigeria to sell his country to another nation. When I red this, I began to wonder if actually is meant to be one country. How can such a thing happen in a normal country. This Minister ought to be in jail for felony charges against him. These are the kind northerners who don’t want Nigeria to develop, all they want is to put Nigeria ablaze so that the south will be in ruins because to them, the south is more developed than the north. This is why they want to rule everyone in the country and control the resources and food production so that they can control and dictate to the rest of Nigerians. This is the nucleus of their centres of their grievances. So for them, they want to cause chaos so that the south could be underdeveloped like them.
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