Nigeria Air to come on board 2022

Minister of aviation Hadi Sirika said the proposed national carrier, Nigeria Air, would come on board in 2022. “Nigerians should trust th...

Minister of aviation Hadi Sirika said the proposed national carrier, Nigeria Air, would come on board in 2022.

“Nigerians should trust that we will be able to deliver a very robust carrier that will be for the size of our economy and we are on course”, Sirika said.

He spoke at the weekly ministerial press briefing organized by the Presidential Communication Team, led by Femi Adesina.

“We have almost gone past the project development stage, we have completed the development of the Outline Business Case (OBC), we have got a compliance certificate of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) and it is our intention that we will take the OBC back to the Federal Executive Council perhaps by next Wednesday.

“We are on our way. As for the timeline, we will have this airline in 2022 by the grace of God and we will start with the domestic and escalate into international.

“We are discussing and we will get the best deal for Nigeria and Nigerians because for sure, the market is there,” he said.

According to the minister, all is being done to make air transportation more affordable for citizens, through an improvement of facilities and services.

“Nigeria is a country of over 200 million people who are highly mobile. So, what we are doing is first and foremost, to develop the infrastructure that will make civil aviation function.

“And once that is done, it will increase the availability of the service and because there is more supply it will help in bringing down the price,” he said.

He said all the achievements he enumerated were contained in a roadmap developed for the aviation sector, which had since been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The national carrier, known as Nigeria Air was initially scheduled to debut in December 2018.

Sirika on 18 July 2018, unveiled the name and logo of the proposed carrier at the Farnborough International Public Air show in London. But the project was aborted after gulping.

In May this year, the Federal Government revived the idea with an injection of $250 million.

The Ministry of Aviation, in a memo, said ‘Nigeria Air’ will be private sector driven.

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