The acting Managing Director of the Nigeria Air, Capt. Dapo Olumide, says the aircraft that flew in with the logo of the airline was chartered from the Ethiopian Airline for the purpose of unveiling the logo.
Olumide said this on Tuesday in Abuja, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Aviation.
He said that the airline had yet to secure an operating licence for full flight operations, saying that the processes were still at the early stages.
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Olumide said that aircraft was used pending the completion of the processes required for the operation of the airline.
He said his mandate was to secure an air operating certificate for the airline not necessarily to operate the airline but to secure a licence to fly.
“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,” Olumide said.
He added:“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.”
Earlier, the Chairman of the Committee, Sen.Biodun Olujimi said it was unfortunate that the former Minister of Aviation failed to involve the committee and other stakeholders in the Air Nigeria project.
“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,” she said.
Meanwhile the House of Representative has urged President Bola Tinubu to constitute a high level Presidential committee to undertake a holistic review of the processes of the Nigeria Air project.
Rep. Nnolim Nnaji, the Chairman of the committee on Aviation said this in Abuja after careful evaluation of the issues of the Nigeria Air.
He said the committee was totally dissatisfied with the actions of the former Minister of Aviation, in going ahead to flag off the operations of Nigeria Air in spite a standing court injunction against such.
He said this was also without any provision for sustaining the operations of the airline.
He said a careful review of the process indicated the exercise to be highly opaque, shrouded in secrecy, shoddy and capable of ridiculing and tarnishing the image of Nigeria before the international community.
” We want to put on record, that the Committee and indeed the National Assembly had no role in the purported launch of Nigeria Air or anything related thereof.
“While the committee and indeed the parliament is not opposed to Nigeria having a National Carrier, as a matter of fact having a National Carrier is highly desirable to us as a people and Nigeria, as a nation,” he said.
