Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, has revealed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has commenced investigation into the controversial Nigeria Air project.
Keyamo who made the disclosure during a one-on-one interview with Channels Television on Wednesday evening, described the Nigeria Air project as disadvantageous to Nigeria and in the interest of Ethiopian Airlines, the core technical partner in the project.
The minister while speaking on a television programme monitored by Aviation Metric Wednesday night said the deal appeared not to be transparent and one that gave great advantage to Ethiopian Airlines to masquerade as setting up a national airline for the country.
The minister, who said the Nigeria Air/Ethiopian deal lacked transparency declared during the interview: “It was not a deal that was good for Nigeria. It was a good concept to have a national carrier but it was not a good deal for Nigeria. The EFCC is investigating the deal to know whether Nigerians were shortchanged. I don’t want to preempt their investigation. The whole composition and the totality of that deal was merely Ethiopian Airlines flying Nigeria Air. It was a foreign airline trying to fly the Nigerian flag.”
He used the opportunity to inform of the plan of the President Bola Tinubu-led government to float an entirely different national carrier which would not involve the domestic airlines participation.
The model was applied by the former minister of Aviation. Senator Hadi Sirika, to package the now failed Nigeria Air from the beginning had been faulted by the different key players, including the domestic carriers on the premise that it gave undue advantages to Ethiopian Airlines and at the detriment of the indigenous carriers.
The height of the controversy came when the local airlines dragged the then government and the minister to court to stop the take-over of Nigeria Air, you a legal approach the minister ignored as he continued with the bad deal.
Few hours into the end of his tenure, Sirika in conjunction with Ethiopian Airline painted and presented one of the aircraft in the fleet of the airline to the Nigerian public as a Nigeria Air aircraft.
The cat was led out of the.bag when it was discovered that the said aircraft which was packaged to deceive Nigerians was later found to be painted in Nigeria colour as a mere show.
Nigerians raised many questions about the huge public funds running into billions squandered on the Nigeria Air deal for almost eight year.
As at the time the former minister left office, no official disclosure of how much was actually expended on the failed carrier.
The latest probe of the failed deal by the EFCC may finally unravel the detailed financial losses incurred by Nigeria..
Other issues the minister addressed during the interview included the efforts being made by him to obtain a N40 billion intervention fund for the upgrade of navigational equipment across the major airports.
