Air Peace boss Allen Onyema says Nigeria Air is ‘charade’

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of Air Peace, Allen Onyema has called on President Bola Tinubu to immediately dissolve the highly controversial Nigeria Air.

Onyema made this plea on Wednesday during an interview with Arise TV.

“When you look at this Nigeria Air thing, look at the shareholding, I have it here, the shareholding agreement, without SAHCO, Nigeria would have been in trouble,” said Onyema.

“The leadership of the entire management, the DFO, the CEO, all the management positions the headship, Ethiopia, deputies and Nigeria.

“Then, look at the shareholding in Ethiopia at 49%. There’s a company called Fairfax, who is this Fairfax? It’s another (company) owned by an Ethiopian.

“They are transaction advisers and they’re going to get 3%. They’re going to get 1.45% of the shareholding capital, which is put at around 250 million. Ethiopia will bring 122 million but not as cash but as rentals,” Onyema stated.

Onyema did not stop there as he also condemned the shareholding arrangement which permits Ethiopia to earn 49% of the venture without contributing a penny to the enterprise.

“It is only the Nigerian companies that are going to bring money, SAHCO and MRS. I have it here, the document is written here,” he added.

“Ethiopia is not bringing a penny into Nigeria. Ethiopia will pay rentals for their own plane, it is written here in black and white, pay for rentals for their own plane for five years.

“So, even if they pay they pay the N122 million, Air Peace alone is worth over $2 billion. As I speak to you, Boeing is in my office now for the delivery of our 737 Max, which is costing over a billion dollars.

“Ethiopia is bringing nothing and they’re going to earn 49% of your country’s wealth, I call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately dissolve this charade called Nigeria Air and start his own thing,” he stated.

Onyema also hit out at the former Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika for what he said about the former’s airline on Sunday.

Sirika had said also on Arise TV that Air Peace stopped Dubai operations due to a “lack of capacity”.

“This is a minister trying to fool the entire nation in his desperate bid to fool everybody to win the nation. He was peddling falsehood on Air Peace. So, how do we as a nation believe every other thing he was saying out there?,” Onyema stated.

“The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority is there. You can contact them, they are the regulators. He was in charge. He signed the import permit for those aircraft. You cannot import any aircraft into the country without the minister of aviation’s approval.

“He did all that and he knew that those airplanes were not leased. They were not rented. They were fully paid for and he told the entire world that we leased those aeroplanes just to make us look bad and at the same time, praise his Ethiopian partners,” he said.

Recall that Air Peace on Monday countered the claims made by Sirika on Nigeria Air, saying that the former minister lied.

The Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) spokesman, Prof. Obiora Okonkwo, also revealed that Nigeria Air has no single shareholder in its records at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).