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 SAYS AIRCRAFT NEEDED FOR AIRLINES TO SERVICE FOREIGN ROUTES
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.
“We are granted the routes, but they cannot service the routes, but the passengers are there, the traffic is there. You mentioned it yourself, there are so many airlines, those who are making orders around the world, they are targeting the Nigerian markets.
“So why are we going to allow other people to come and take advantage of our own traffic when we can empower our own local operators to take advantage of their own markets? That is what we want to do.”
He said Air France does over 10 trips to Nigeria in a week, however, no Nigerian-owned airline flies to Paris, adding that “two American airlines come to Nigeria daily, United and Delta, we can not go to America, Lufthansa comes to Nigeria more than 10 times a week, we can not go to Germany”.
“South Africa comes, we can not go to South Africa. We just smoothened the relationship with UAE now, so they begin October 1, Qatar comes, Saudi Arabia is about to begin,” he said.
“We have not ignited our own capacity to also service those routes. They are huge potential, but all of these airlines we are talking about, they are full everyday of Nigerians, full of passengers. Sometimes you can’t get a ticket to buy.
“They are our traffic, they are our passengers. We need to empower these people (domestic airlines) here to take advantage of that.”
Also, Keyamo said his ministry is working on the issue of insurance, which he said has been a stumbling block.
“Well, there’s one more thing, and that’s insurance. We are working on that, because, of course, you know, the international business, they expects that the risk will be placed in the international market, not in the local markets because they don’t trust our local market to carry the risk. And that has been a major stumbling block,” he said.
“We are working seriously on that, and I’m sure very soon, added to the compliance with the Cape Town Convention, is going to totally unlock that market.”
In a post on X on Thursday, Keyamo shared details of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Boeing, outlining several critical areas of collaboration with the aircraft manufacturer.
Part of the MOU includes leveraging Boeing’s network of financiers and lessors to better position Nigerian airlines to acquire newer-generation Boeing aircraft.
