By Abubakar Yunusa
Festus Keyamo, the minister of aviation and aerospace development, has told Boeing, an aircraft manufacturer, and other investors to report any official requesting bribe before they can conduct business in Nigeria.
Keyamo spoke on Wednesday during a meeting with Boeing executives in Seattle, Washington, where he led a delegation of executives from major airlines under the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) and other key stakeholders in the civil aviation ecosystem.
“So for new investors who are coming to Nigeria, they are welcome. Nobody is going to frustrate you within Nigeria. If anybody tries to frustrate you by asking for gratification or anything, report him to me, I will take action,” he said.
“We want to open the doors for everybody to come into Nigeria.”
The minister led the delegation to facilitate the acquisition of dry lease aircraft for domestic airlines and sign an aircraft maintenance agreement.
During the meeting, he also assured that the aircraft leased to domestic airlines will be safe in Nigeria.
“I want you all to see me, here, as the minister, I’m giving a personal guarantee, beyond the compliance with the law, personal guarantee, that I will not tolerate the frustration of any agreement with any lessor based in Nigeria, the aircraft coming to Nigeria,” he said.
“I will give a personal guarantee of safety of these aircraft, and repossession of those aircraft, whether through the judicial process, or through the NCAA, which I supervise, through a judicial process, through an administrative process, and you know, the Cape Town convention says five days, we can be multi-registered, within five days.
“I will make sure we can do it within four days, we can register our aircraft. It’s a personal guarantee. Read my lips, I’m going to do it.”
Also, Keyamo said he understands the issues stakeholders in the industry face and efforts have been made to ensure air operating licences are issued quickly.
“So, please, I understand the issues, and I want to ensure that these local operators are empowered to do what they have to do. And what we have to do as governments, in terms of regulation, in terms of even the access to licenses now, the air operating licences now, it’s faster, it’s quicker, they will attest to that. So it’s not going to be a long process again to get your licenses out to operate,” the minister said.
Keyamo also told the aircraft manufacturer that Nigeria has so many international routes that domestic airlines can not service due to lack of necessary dry lease aircraft.
He said many airlines in Nigeria have access to only wet lease aircraft.
A dry lease service is said to have lower cost and gives the lessee operational control of the aircraft as the renter provides crew, maintenance and insurance (CMI).
However, wet lease service is considered costly, with the lessor providing the aircraft as well as the CMI and having operational control.
“In a country where we hardly access dry leasing, most of the businesses are on ACMIs, they are wet leases, and yet many of them ride at their mutual obligations. Many of them, they have shown the capacity to meet their obligations. If you have shown the capacity to meet their obligations with ACMIs, how much, you know, more when they have access to dry leasing,” Keyamo said.
“And we have the traffic to support that. I’ve said that earlier. That is why it is a symbiotic relationship.
“And we have so many routes right now under our BASA arrangements with different countries, our reciprocal rights that we cannot even service because of the lack of capacity of the local operators.
