Nigeria to sign additional bilateral air services agreement in 2021

The Federal Government will in 2021 sign additional Bilateral/multilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) in 2021, minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika has said.

Sirika stated this when he appeared before the House of Representatives committee on aviation, chaired by Nnolim Nnaji, to defence his ministry’s 2021 budget on Thursday.

This was as the lawmakers queried the N3 billion national carrier project, captured both in 2020 and 2021 budgets of the aviation ministry.

A member of the committee, Akin Alabi while pointing out inconsistencies in the budget said: “A lot of Nigerians are not impressed about the national carrier project, the working capital for the national carrier in the 2020 budget was N2.2 billion allocated and this year 2021, you are asking for N1 billion.

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“Can you explain what you mean by ‘working capital’ because I know it is definitely not to buy planes; so can you explain what the billions year-in-year-out are meant for as regards working capital?

“Secondly, for the concession of four international airports: Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, last year, N297 million was budgeted for it and this year, you are asking for N200 million.

“What type of consultancy is this that will cost half a billion? For the national carrier, you are still requesting for N250 million for consultancy”

Sirika responding said the ministry set out to establish a strong national carrier commensurate with the population size, market, manpower of Nigeria that will add value to the economy.

According to him, the ministry had grown the number of passengers from 8 million to 18 million since 2015 and airplane management had significantly improved.

“This can be made much better if we have a well established private sector-led national carrier. The fact that the money is there in the budget, does not mean it was released or utilised; since we began this project, the amount spent on the activities of the carrier so far if I am not mistaken, is N350 million.

On the consultancy for the contentious concessions of four airports in the country, Sirika said: “I think there are a lot of misconceptions about this concession. In the first instance, you can actually built a structure to international standard, very operational, make it very beautiful and then of course concession it so that it is run better.