The Interim Managing Director of Nigeria Air, Captain Dayo Olumide has informed the Senate Committee on Aviation on Tuesday, that the recently unveiled Nigeria Air launched by former President Muhamadu Buhari, was a chattered aircraft from Ethiopia hired for five days to showcase the logo to Nigerians and their shareholders.
Captain Dayo disclosed further that, for Nigeria to operate an aircraft, the aircraft must be Nigeria registered with all necessary procedures complied with.
He added that the particular aircraft that was unveiled was not registered and came into Nigeria with a few days clearance from Ethiopia and was returned after use.
He further stated that Nigeria only has an airport license which is one of two licenses required for operating an airline and does not permit one to carry out commercial services operations.
He said, “I will like to address your question first before I go on. The aircraft that came in and left was a legitimate charter flight.
“Anyone of us here, if we have a destination wedding in Senegal, we can charter an aircraft. You don’t need to have a licence to do that, you just charter an aircraft, an aircraft you paid for it, it will be brought here, take your passengers, and off you go.
“And that is what we did. But in this case, it was to unveil ever since 2018, all you have ever seen about Nigeria Aircraft were pictures, drawings not the real aircraft, and we thought it was time to show what the logo will look like on a real aircraft and also to let our shareholders see the effort we have made so far.
Our institutional investors are not in aviation, but they are putting their money for 10 or 15 years. So they need to see what the actual aircraft with logo will look like. Then the social media dimension came into it.
“It is an Ethiopian-registered one, why is it Ethiopian-registered. To operate aircraft in Nigeria, they must be Nigerian registered; that aircraft was not 5th November registered because it was a chartered flight and it came in with just a few days clearance and off it went.
“For us to get that licence which is my mandate, we must have three aircraft, among other things, before the NCA will give us a license, and those three aircraft must be Nigerian registered aircraft.
“There are five steps that one goes through to have a license. We have gone from the first one to the second one, but the problem is that when you change what we call post holders, post holders is a technical term for director of maintenance, Chief pilot, when you change them and replace them completely, you have to go back to phase one to interview them to be compliant to the authority. But haven gone back to phase one doesn’t mean you have done anything wrong. That is a correct and normal process.
“So when this aircraft came on a chartered flight, everybody said we have launched Nigeria Air, I want to clarify that we have not launched Nigeria Air”.
In their remarks , the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Biodun Olujimi ( PDP Ekiti South ) and Smart Adeyemi ( APC Kogi West) , said it was unfortunate for the Nigeria Air project to be shrouded in suspicion and secrecy.
The committee also frowned at other decisions taken by handlers in the aviation sector that does not add value to the sector and the image of the country.
