BY OLAPEJU OLUBI
Chairman of indigenous airline, Air Peace, Barrister Allen Onyema has blamed government bottleneck and sentiments to poor ease of doing business in Nigeria especially in the aviation sector.
Onyema said this while delivering a speech at the Annual Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association held in Abuja on August, 28, 2023.
He said Air Peace has about 14 million USD stranded in the Central Bank of Nigeria and about 15 aircraft stranded abroad, adding that people says Nigerian airlines lack capacity, while they actually lack truthful government support and ease of doing business.
He recounted how he applied to run a maintenance hangar in 2015 after paying over 100 million naira to the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to lease land at the Lagos Airport but added that Air Peace was yet to get the land even eight years after.
Onyema noted, “Do you know the amount this country spends on aircraft maintenance through its airlines?” he asked. “Air Peace alone in 2022, expended 78 billion naira on maintenance and these funds went to foreign countries.”
His words, “It is only when we start fighting for each other that we can have a nation. What we are doing now is fighting against each other which is the bane that has stunted our development. It is not good. Nigerians are fighting against each other instead of fighting for one another”.
He stressed; “Until we fight for one other, there may never be nationhood. We need to fight for one another.”
The Air Peace boss called on the President Bola Tinubu led government to develop policies and action plans to unite the country and for citizens to eschew ethnic sentiments.
Citing the myriads of insecurity challenges which have bedevilled the country over time, Onyema emphasised that no nation develops in an atmosphere of rancour and insecurity.
He listed issue of Boko Haram insurgency, famers-herdsmen clashes in the North, ritual killings and gangsterism in the South West, separatist violence with the attendant criminal opportunism in the South East, piracy and oil theft in the South-South.
The Air Peace chairman raised a lot of questions including: “How do you grow your economy when local investors are being treated with levity and envy by their own ministers? How do you grow your economy when indigenous investments are overtaxed?
According to him; “These same investors are providing jobs for the populace. How do you grow your economy when people in government see you as an enemy, a rival, because they are beclouded by whatever sentiments they believe in, thereby making business difficult?”.
