Despite the campaign for liberalization and collaboration to realise the objectives of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), the Chairman of Air Peace Dr Allen Onyema yesterday narrated how some countries in the region where the airline extended its services use hostile operating environment through outrageous airport charges to frustrate the Nigerian carrier.
Onyema said in the bid to protect their airlines against competition from other African carriers, all the countries Air Peace operates to, except Ghana, use exorbitant charges to discourage its operation.
Incidentally, those countries have airlines which operate to Nigeria and which benefit from Nigeria’s friendly reception to African carriers.
Onyema made this known during the 48th Annual General Meeting and Exhibition of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA) at Balmoral Convention Centre, Ikeja, Lagos
disclosing that when Air Peace challenged the hostility against those countries in court, they would reluctantly allow Air Peace to operate but afterwards use exorbitant airport charges to frustrate the airline.
“It took us four years to get approval to fly into one West African country but their airline has been coming into Nigeria for many years. When we eventually started flying, they wanted to chase us away with exorbitant airport charges. They told us to pay $12,000 per landing. We cannot implement SAATM in a lopsided way and expect it to work.
“Some countries we fly into send us bills running into millions of euros. When we ask them how we incurred the bills, they won’t respond. We made payment and after making payment, they told us the account we paid into no longer exists and we need to make a fresh payment. I have never seen a country as welcoming as Nigeria but we are being stigmatised in other countries,” Onyema said.
He also disclosed that another African country asked Air Peace to pay 4 million euros as charges incurred but when Air Peace asked them how they arrived at the charges, they got judgement against Air Peace in a French court.
On the London route, the Air Peace Chairman said the advantage Air Peace has over other airlines is that Air Peace is flying people from other states in Nigeria to London via the Lagos airport, thereby saving passengers over N200,000 they would have paid on local destinations after arriving at Lagos airport.
“We studied to find out why Nigerian airlines failed on the London route, we know the issues and we addressed them. It is not totally the fault of Nigerian airlines. If I didn’t go to the media to expose what Gatwick and other airlines were doing to us, we would not have lasted on the Lagos-London route for two weeks,” he said.
The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, who was represented by the Director, Air Transport Management, Ministry of Aviation, Hassan Tai Ejibunu, said the theme of this year’s NANTA AGM and Exhibition: ‘Unlocking Africa’s Economic Potential: Travel and Tourism as Catalyst for Intra-Africa Business, Investment and Trade,’ was very apt as it was in sync with the visionary thought of African leaders to integrate and facilitate trade and investment among the 55 countries of the African Union and eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in the continent, through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
He explained that AfCFTA is the world’s largest free trade area which objective includes free movement of people and capital. With a combined GDP of an estimated $3.4 trillion, the pact links 1.4 billion people living in different parts of the continent.
Keyamo said the underlying objectives behind the creation of AfCTFA cannot be totally achieved without the contribution of associations like NANTA in the continent, as they facilitate the movement of people, goods and services.
He said the 5–Point Agenda of the Minister which are in tandem with the renewed Hope Agenda of the President are to “Ensure strict compliance with safety regulations and continuous upward movement of Nigeria’s rating by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), support for the growth and sustenance of local businesses; whilst holding them to the highest international standard in the aviation industry.”
The agenda, he said, includes improving airport infrastructure, developing human capacity within the industry and Optimising revenue generation for the Federal Government.
Also speaking at the event, the outgoing President of NANTA, Susan Akporaiye, said when NANTA was confronted by the high fare pandemic out of Nigeria, it reasoned with the government and stakeholders to address the issue.
Akporaiye also hinted that during the COVID-19, it trained and retrained members for innovation on new streams of income.
