Former Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development Hadi Sirika has defended the suspended Nigeria Air project, describing it as a good deal for the country.
The former minister, in an interview on a TV programme on Wednesday monitored by The Nation, refuted claims that the project was fraudulent, saying that the process was transparent and followed the rules of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC).
He tasked anyone who doubts the project to invoke the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get details of the project from the ministry.
He further charged those who claimed the project was fraudulent to provide evidence to support their allegations.
Contrary to claims that about N100billion was spent on the national carrier project, he said only N5billion was earmarked for the project.
Sirika also disclosed his plans to detail all that transpired while in office in a book that would be released by him
Sirika said: “I had no intention to speak about my time in office for now, and I intend to bring up a book on that, but since you asked the question and people will be very interested, I will speak. The project is a Public Private Partnership which was regulated by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), which gave certificates of the Outline Business Case (OBC).
“Nigeria Air is not a bad deal, and I read in the papers that we spent N100billion or thereabout, and it’s lost in the process, which is a lie. I did say in 2015 to 2023 that the total budget for the national carrier was N5billion and the total amount released was N3 billion and I left there with over a billion naira and the monies or about 2 billion that was spent; nearly a third of it went to the consultancy, that is the business case which is obviously the OBC and so many other consultancies that were given during that time and the balance for the salaries of the staff that we have”.
He also stated that some airlines took the government to court for adopting.to establish a national carrier.He said: “Some airlines went to court; AirPeace, United Nigeria and Azman went to court to say that we cannot as a government establish an airline where we’ll take a stake of five per cent and if there was no court case and if the government that came in had pursued the court case by today, we’ll have the airline”.On how Ethiopian Air emerged the winner of the bid, he said: “Talking about Ethiopian, I did say 95 per cent of all African airlines operating within Africa are non-African. They are the Emirates, Qatar, British Airways etc except for Ethiopian airlines and these people have been for many years running the airline, they have made a statement of how to run the airline and they are african and they came to partner with us to be able to open up the world.
“Today, the price of tickets out of Abuja to London is more expensive than the ticket from Accra to London and the reason is because we do not have a strong formidable airline with the capacity to continue to do so. We have seen the likes of AirPeace before, they’ve come and gone and what is amiss is that the capacity that they need to build to compete with people who have many airplanes. I don’t think an airline that has one or even five aircraft that are old can compete in the global market with the well-established carriers that have 250 airplanes and expect to operate and make profits.
He continued: “So, to sum it up, that was all that we did to establish the Nigeria Air before these people went to court”.
Debunking the claims that the project was a fraud, he said: “There’s no fraud, if there’s fraud by now that I’ve said it, they would have said otherwise and if the minister is saying it, I don’t want to do anything with him because that may go to what they’re claiming to go to court on but if he’s saying it’s a bad idea, Niigerians should invoke the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) which is in place to go to the ministry of aviation where the gentleman sits as the minister and get the documents and also go to ICRC and get the documents and establish where the fraud is.
“They should go and establish where there’s fraud. It’s all a lie. it’s This airline whether it is done now or in the future it will come to become because we didn’t arrogate to ourselves the knowledge of aviation alone, those who train those who train those who trained us are alive but what we did is that I personally invited and also officially through official channels invited all of them to come and join and buy shares of that carrier and go into joint venture.
He added: “The bid happened transparently to which some of those airlines participated in the bid and the airline that emerged won fair and square and it’s not our process, it’s the process of ICRC. They should go and ask ICRC whether they there’s corruption in it and the documents are there.
“The day we will talk about Nigeria Air would come and my book also would come. I am not a fraudulent person and I didn’t lead a fraudulent ministry”.
