President Bola Tinubu has indefinitely suspended the Nigeria Air project.
The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace, Festus Keyamo announced this at the Ministerial briefing to mark the first year of the Tinubu administration.
He said the airline was never a Nigerian airline but an attempt to use a foreign airline to pose as a Nigerian national airline.
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It could be recalled that in 2023, the Ministry of Aviation, under Hadi Sirika, former minister, unveiled Nigeria Air — three days before the end of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
The development had elicited concerns among stakeholders nationwide over the ownership arrangement which gave Ethiopian Airlines a 49 percent equity stake.
The federal government had a 5 percent equity, while a consortium of three Nigerian investors had 46 percent.
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Reacting to the deal in June 2023, the House of Representatives asked the federal government to suspend the operations of Nigeria Air, describing it as ‘a fraud’.
In August 2023, Keyamo announced that the national carrier project was suspended till further notice.
ASHENEWS recalls that the EFCC filed fresh charges alleging that Sirika, “while being the Minister of Aviation, on or about 18th August 2022, in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did use your position to confer an unfair advantage upon Enginos Nigeria Limited, whose alter ego, Ahmad Abubakar Sirika, is your biological brother, by using your position to influence the award to him, the contract for the construction of a terminal building at Katsina Airport for the sum of N1,345,586,500.00.”
