During an interview with Arise TV last week, the embattled former Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, who has been accused of engineering fraud in the launching of the country’s national carrier, raised some feathers in what appeared to be a defense of his activities.
During that interview, Sen. Sirika made some comments which are now being termed false including that the reason Air Peace stopped plying the Dubai route was because it lacked capacity. Sen. Sirika’s allegation immediately attracted a statement from the management of Air Peace, debunking it as false. Also, in a bid to clarify issues more, in a right-of-reply kind of interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, the Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Mr Allen Onyema, maintained that claims made about his airline operation by Sen. Sirika, were nothing but false, noting that the ex-ministers statements were targeted at destroying the good image of Air Peace.
He went on to describe the former minister’s statements as “very unfortunate”, adding, “It’s very shameful for an ex-minister, somebody who, 20 years ago, was in the House of Representatives, he was a senator, and for the last eight years, he was a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, being paid from my taxpaying, he supervised my ministry, you expected him to be our chief marketer but that hasn’t happened.” Onyema who stated that he wouldn’t expose a lot of things on national television for the love of the nation, however, decided he must point out certain things. His words: “The ex-minister of Aviation came out to say indirectly or directly that the Airline he supervised is incompetent, leased two aircraft, paying five hundred thousand dollars monthly for 18 months, incurring 19 million dollars and he was peddling falsehood barefacedly, he never blinked, he was speaking as a matter of fact like that happened.
“Imagine the damage this minister had done to the image and reputation of Air Peace. “Meanwhile he was peddling pure falsehood. How do we now believe every other thing he said on that day?”
To set the record straight, Onyema explained that “Air Peace doesn’t have two 777s; Air Peace has three and those three were out rightly purchased. Two of those planes are in fact, X Emirates. One is X Singapore Airlines with everything you can think of in those planes outrightly purchased by Air Peace. Therefore, we never paid rental to anybody, we never incurred…, in the first place, you can’t even use 250,000 to rent a 777; how much do you pay for a single aircraft not to talk of a 777. So this is a minister trying to fool the entire nation in his desperate bid to fool everybody to win the nation. He was peddling falsehood on Air Peace so, how do we as a nation believe every other thing he was saying out there? The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority that regulates us is there, you can contact them. He was in charge, he signed the import permit. You cannot import any aircraft into the country without the minister of aviation’s approving. So he knew quite well that those planes were not leased; they were not rented, they were fully paid for. But he told the entire world that we leased those planes just to make us look bad and at the same time, praise Ethiopia, his partners.”
Genesis of the controversies
Onyema further explained that the history of the whole struggle, contrary to what the minister had been saying, was about having a national career. According to him, a national career is a moribund idea worldwide and as such, they knew it was going to “fall and fail like a pack of cards”. According to him, most nations have moved away from national carriers due to huge debt portfolios and issues of mismanagement.
“Why should Nigeria in 2023 be going backwards instead of forward? All they needed to do is to strengthen the ease of doing business so that people of means, private concerns of means will come and invest in aviation industry. We are not fighting for ourselves. They thought we were afraid of competition. When they wanted to do the national carrier, we made comments but most people stood against it. The whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. Our members told Air Peace to apply but when we went to the website we were blocked,” he explained.
The Air Peace CEO further disclosed that he and his team that sued the federal government challenging the launch of Air Nigeria did not withdraw the suit, and the court did not strike it out either, noting that the former minister brought in Ethiopian Airline to make a mockery of the judicial process. “…We went to court, those four suits were meant to demean the local operators in favour of this charade they’ve put up with Ethiopia. Even at some point, ex-president Muhammadu Buhari shot down this National Air project at a time. One man just hoodwinked the country into believing that this is needed. All they needed to do was to set up a strong light carrier and if you provide enabling environment, more people will invest.
”He told the world that Air Peace was no longer going to Dubai because of low capacity.”
Still miffed with Sen. Sirika’s claims, Onyema said, “Whoever advised senator Hadi Sirika to come on national television, to defend the indefensible has not done him any good. The whole world knows we started operations into Dubai July 5, 2019. We never stopped until Covid, when everybody stopped. When Covid stopped, we started. UAE decided for whatever reason, to stop the issuance of visas to Nigeria; we stopped going to Dubai, Emirates stopped coming to Nigeria. Neither Air Peace nor Emirates is plying this route now. So why should a minister of government barefacedly, come on television to speak falsehood because you want to paint the indigenous operators black and blue.”
Responding to the statement that his airline lacks capacity even after the tremendous role he played in bringing Nigerians in foreign countries home during covid-19 and recently Sudan, Onyema questioned how the ex-minister could have said such. He recounted that when “The entire world shut down during the lockdown in 2020 because of covid-19, Air Peace went to China on three occasions, bringing back Nigerians; that is a 14, 15 hours non-stop flight, deploying our 777s to bring Nigerians back to their homeland proudly. Three times, yet Air Peace doesn’t have capacity? Air Peace also went to India 12 times bringing Nigerians back home.” He disclosed further that “most Nigerians in India, didn’t have money to pay Ethiopia (air line) to bring them back, I deployed my jets to bring them back. Those we brought back later put it in the newspaper to thank us because we brought them back free of charge.”
Onyema also recounted helping to evacuate Nigerians from other countries such as Indonesia, London, South Africa and South Sudan. He said after flying into the UK to bring home Nigerians during covid-19, his permit was not renewed for a second trip adding that, “I paid for Nigerians, hired a European carrier to bring Nigerians home.The federal government praised Air Peace for doing that as well as deploying their 777s on two occasions to rescue Nigerians during xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Nigeria was respected worldwide for what Air Peace did on their behalf.”
Also recalling his contributions towards helping to fight insecurity in the country, he said, “I have always contributed to the well-being of this country and all I get from some government officials is this kind of thing; they fight you from different angles.”
Why President Tinubu should dissolve Nigeria Air
While calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dissolve Nigeria Air, Onyema faulted the shareholding arrangement of the airline noting that the leadership of the entire management of the airline is twisted in favour of Ethiopia. ”When you look at this Nigeria Air thing, look at the shareholding, I have it here, the shareholding agreement, without SAHCO, Nigeria would have been in trouble.
“The leadership of the entire management, the DFO, the CEO, all the management positions the headship- Ethiopia, deputies- Nigeria. Then, look at the shareholding in Ethiopia 49%. There’s a company called Fairfax, who is this Fairfax? It’s another Ethiopian (company), owned by an Ethiopian; they are transaction advisers and they’re going to get 3%. They’re going to get 1.45% of the shareholding capital, which is put at 250 million. Ethiopia will bring 122 million but not as cash but as rentals,” he stated.
The Air Peace boss further condemned the shareholding arrangement that favours Ethiopia which he said, is not contributing a penny to the airline adding that “It is only the Nigerian companies that are going to bring money, SAHCO and MRS. I have it here, the document is written here. Ethiopia is not bringing a penny into Nigeria. Ethiopia will pay rentals for their own plane, it is written here in black and white, pay for rentals for their own plane for five years. So even if they pay the N122 thousand, Air Peace alone is worth over $2 billion. As I speak to you, Boeing is in my office now for the delivery of our 737 Max, which is costing over a billion dollars. Ethiopia is bringing nothing and they’re going to earn 49% of your country’s wealth.”
I call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately dissolve this charade called Nigeria Air and start his own thing.”
He disclosed that before this charade, what Ethiopian Airline did with the National carrier, the Ethiopian Airline also wanted to do with him, revealing that they approached him for a deal that would earn him royalties and make him swim in millions of Dollars for life with the Ethiopian Airline supplying the planes but he said after considering that other airlines will die, jobs will be lost, etc, that he turned down the deal just for national interest.