The acting Managing Director of Nigeria Air, Captain Dapo Olumide, has uncover more evidence about the alleged ‘fraudulent’ launching of the airline by the former President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.
Nigerian House of Representatives on Tuesday (June 6, 2023) affirmed its report that Buhari’s administration deceived Nigerians by unveiling a Boeing 737-800 aircraft belonging to Ethiopian Airlines as a “Nigerian Air” plane.
The plane unveiled by the administration as Nigerian Air a few days before Buhari left office, was over 10 years old and belonged to Ethiopian Airlines.
ET-APL is the registration number for it.
Its Mode is S Q4005C, and its Serial Number is 40965/4075, according to information to a reliable source from Plane Spotters, a platform that keeps track of aircraft.
“The first flight was on an Ethiopian Airlines plane,” it stated. It changed its name to Malawi Airlines on February 16, 2014. After that, Ethiopian Airlines bought it once more in 2015, and Ethiopian Air has been using it ever since.
“Then on the 26th of May 2023, it has Nigeria Air colours without changing ownership. It was first spotted in South Africa before it flew to Nigeria today.”
When Captain Olumide testified before the Senate Committee on Aviation on Tuesday (June 6, 2023), he said that the Ethiopian Airlines plane that carried the Nigeria Air brand had been hired specifically for the introduction of the Nigeria Air logo.
Nigeria does not yet have an operating permit for full flight operations, according to Olumide, who also noted that the procedures to obtain the permit were still in its infancy.
He mentioned how the Buhari-led administration demonstrated the logo to Nigerians and investors by using a specially chartered Ethiopian aircraft.
The Acting MD maintains that Nigerians have only seen images of Nigeria Air since 2018 since the nation lacks the three aircraft needed to obtain the operational license.
According to him,
“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 the Logo of Nigeria Air.
“Ever since 2018, all you have ever seen about Nigeria Air were pictures, drawings not the real aircraft, and we thought it was time to show what the real aircraft will look like, also to let shareholders see.
“We have institutional investors, they are not in aviation but they are putting their money for 10 to 15 years, so they need to see what the actual aircraft will look like.
“So we brought it in here to show them what the aircraft will look like, then the social media dimension came into it.
“For us to get that licence which is my mandate, we must among other things have three aircraft before the NCAA will give us a licence and those three aircraft must be Nigerian registered aircraft.
“So when this aircraft came on a chartered flight, everybody said we have launched Nigeria Air, there are learned people in the aviation industry who could have countered that when social media came out, but they chose not to.”
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, earlier in the meeting, Senator Biodun Olujimi, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Aviation, argued that the former minister of aviation had neglected to include the committee and other stakeholders in the Nigeria Air project.
Senator Olujimi said, “To state the obvious, he failed to carry members of the Committee along in virtually all ramifications despite the degree of respect members accorded him any time he was invited for meetings.”
