Our partnership with Nigeria to establish Airline closed – Ethiopian Airlines

The Ethiopian Airlines Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO), Mesfin Tasew, has said that its partnership with Nigeria to establish an airline is closed.

Tasew said that the Ethiopian Airlines planned to help the Nigerian government establish a profitable airline but the process suffered opposition.

Tasew spoke on the deal with Nigeria for the first time in an interview with Bloomberg, saying that the Ethiopian Airlines have closed the project to help Nigeria set up an airline.

“We had a great hope of establishing a very strong national carrier for Nigeria. We started but unfortunately it didn’t become successful after the change of government in Nigeria; but that project is closed now,” he said.

“We don’t have a current plan to go to Nigeria as it stands. We don’t have the intention to partner with any of the Nigerian airlines to date because it has been politicised.

“We tried to help the country by partnering with the government and other institutional investors in Nigeria to use our expertise, our experience and establish a reliable airline that would be profitable in the short term.

“But as you may have read from the media, it was not welcomed by the Nigerian airlines.

“They considered it in a wrong direction. They believed that if Ethiopian Airlines goes into Nigeria it will hurt their business; which is not right.

“Our intention was to help the country but since they objected to the idea, there is no need for Ethiopian Airlines to go there as long as they don’t accept it, we don’t want to be a problem there.”