Crime
Nigeria Airways: How Sirika’s Pact With Ethiopian Airlines Would’ve Undermined Nigeria – Festus Keyamo
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Nigeria Airways: How Sirika’s pact with Ethiopian Airlines would’ve undermined Nigeria – Festus Keyamo
By Aremu Adebayo
Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development has exposed documents of agreements on botched Nigeria Air signed by Hadi Sirika, the former minister of aviation.
In a viral video, Festus Keyamo exposed some pages of the documents, explaining some parts of the deed of agreements signed by Sirika and the Ethiopian government.
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.”
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 carrier and all the profits would go to Addis Ababa.
“The CEO of Nigeria Air would have been an Ethiopian, financial officer Ethiopian, 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
