By Hadiza Ibrahim
Allen Onyema, the Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, has called for the dissolving of Nigeria Air, the country’s purported national airline unveiled by the previous administration.
This is as he suggested that the country should rather invest in a flagbearer airline.
Onyema, who spoke on Arise Television’s Morning Show, criticised the shareholding structure of the airline, saying that it favours Ethiopia. He argued that Nigeria is contributing the financial investment for the airline, while Ethiopia is set to earn 49% of the venture without actually putting any money into it.
He further revealed that in 2019, Ethiopian Airlines approached Air Peace for a partnership, but he turned down the offer because of his patriotism for Nigeria, adding that according to the agreement signed for the stake in Nigeria Air, Ethiopians were not expected to bring in any money as an investment into the project.
Also, he alleged that the leadership of the entire management of the proposed Nigeria Air—the DFO, CEO, and all the management positions—were to be headed by Ethiopians while the deputy position was given to Nigeria.
Onyema stressed that the unveiling of Nigeria Air despite pending litigation was a total disrespect of the judiciary that should not be tolerated.
The Air Peace boss said, “Look at the shareholding; ET has 49%; there is a company called Fairfax, who is this Fairfax? It is owned by ET; their transaction advisers and they are going to get three per cent, 1.4/1.5% of the shareholding capital which is put at $250m and ET will bring $122m but not as cash but as rentals.
“It is only the Nigerian companies that are going to bring money; SAHCO and MRS. I have the document here. ET is not bringing a penny into Nigeria; ET will pay rentals for their plane for five years. It is written here in black and white. Even if they pay the $122 million, Air Peace alone is worth over $2 billion. As I speak to you, Boeing is in my office now for the delivery of our 737 Max, which is costing over a billion dollars.”
He added, ”The aircraft from Embraer that we started receiving cost about a billion dollars; five of them have entered Nigeria; ET is bringing nothing and they are going to get 49% of your country’s wealth. I call on President Ahmed Bola Tinubu to immediately dissolve this charade called Nigeria Air and start his own thing.”
On whether Air Peace was interested in partnering with Nigeria Air, he said: “When they wanted to do the national carrier, we gave our comments and we knew the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy, our members told Air Peace to apply and when you go to that website, you will be blocked. We never got anywhere. We did try.”
He also added, “You need to apply for TCO; they wrote to the Nigerian authorities to ask if they know about Air Peace and I was denied. They said no, we didn’t know them, we didn’t know they were applying, we didn’t authorise them to apply and I said for what? So TCO, that’s the European Tech Companies Operators, you need to get this before going into any European countries for operations; they stopped us.”
