The proposed national carrier, Nigeria Air, has continued to dominate public discourse, with experts expressing divergent views on its viability or otherwise.
Though the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) had suspended the national carrier project, following complexities in the process that would have led to the final takeoff of the airline, but Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, said recently that it remained a top priority for government.
“Nigeria is a traveling public. We have seen how this quarter alone, the aviation sector has grown by about 12.1 percent, and is the second fastest growing industry in the country as of today” Sirika said recently on the project.
“We need a carrier that is equal to the Nigerian economy, because if we do not have any alternative, the other carriers have a field day,” he further argued.
According to him, “The carrier is on course, the outline, business case has been bought by the consultant and it is being looked at and implementation will begin soon.
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“We will advertise and invite people to come and partner in a PPP arrangement so that we can float the airline and I believe we will get it right this time around.
On the controversies that surrounded the announcement and eventual suspension, the minister said it was expected but that the ability to deal with those controversies is what matters.
He said at the time stakeholders were invited to discuss the well-thought out road map, and had adopted the road map, but because of elections and other exigencies, it was suspended so that this could be gotten right.
“The question is not how very quickly we get it but how very well.”
The federal government has not hidden its determination to pull through with the ambitious plan, and had allocated a whopping N47bn ($155m) take-off grant in the 2019 budget to it.
The “Nigerian Air” is being planned as a Public-private Partnership (PPP) project, to be managed by a private operator without interference from the government. Government’s stake in the new national carrier will be no more than a 5% holding, authorities have proposed. The remaining 95% will be owned by strategic investors and the general public.
A cross section of experts, who spoke with our correspondent, expressed different opinions about the economic value of the national carrier.
Some who do not see an immediate need for it, particularly recalled how the defunct Nigerian Airways collapsed 15 years ago, and a 2004 joint venture with billionaire Richard Branson, named Virgin Nigeria, shut down shortly after he pulled out five years later because of mismanagement.
In an interview with Businessday, Dung Pam, an aviation expert, said the new National Carrier amounts to an aberration for the federal government to conceive the idea, when number of private airlines were seen to be performing below expectations.
Rather than bringing this on board, the regulatory authorities should find a way of strengthening the private airlines’ capacities to function optimally, Pam suggests.
“This is an investment that has been made by more or less struggling Nigerian entrepreneurs. None of the airlines can we vouch for now, that is making profit at the moment.
