Tinubu Should Dissolve Nigeria Air – Allen Onyema

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, has asked President Bola Tinubu to dissolve the national carrier, Nigeria Air.

Speaking in an interview on Arise News on Wednesday, Onyema stated that the unveiling of Nigeria Air is a charade and not what the country needs at the moment.

The Air Peace boss asserted that the court orders stopping the unveiling of the national carrier were never vacated as word-of-mouth vacation does not count.

Onyema said the falsehood made by the former Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika, regarding Air Peace, was aimed at demeaning local operators and indigenous Nigerian airlines in favour of Nigeria Air.

He said: “This is a minister trying to fool the entire nation in his desperate bid to fool everybody to win the nation. He was peddling falsehood on Air Peace. So, how do we as a nation believe every other thing he was saying out there?

“The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority is there. You can contact them, they are the regulators. He was in charge. He signed the import permit for those aircraft. You cannot import any aircraft into the country without the minister of aviation’s approval. He did all that and he knew that those airplanes were not leased. They were not rented. They were fully paid for and he told the entire world that we leased those airplanes just to make us look bad and at the same time, praise his Ethiopian partners.”

Onyema also condemned the shareholding pattern of Nigeria Air, stating that even though the Ethiopians have 49 percent of the shareholding, they are not bringing any penny into the company.

He added: “It is only the Nigerian companies that are going to bring in money, SACHO, and MRS. The document is with us here. Ethiopia is not bringing a penny into Nigeria. Ethiopia will pay rentals for their own planes for five years. Even if they pay the 122 thousand, Air Peace alone is worth over two billion dollars.”