I have never been impressed by sole proprietorship mentality of Nigerian airline operators who, instead of emulating airlines in Europe by coming together for economy of scale, always believe they can blackmail government for bailout to sustain their greed and inefficiency. For this reason, I have remained one of the persistent voices calling on government to establish a national carrier despite the sentiments against government participation in business.
Many of my generation who witnessed the golden era of the Nigeria Airways are not swayed by argument against government participation in business. It was a season of national pride with the national carrier controlling over 30 aircraft, flown to all parts of the world by Nigerian pilots. It was an age when with just N380, you can have a round trip departing Lagos for London in the morning and returning to Lagos the following day; when our undergraduates with subsidized cheap student tickets could attend weekend parties in London and when our Lagos secondary school children in federal colleges in Sokoto, Kano Port Harcourt flew Nigerian Airways with relative ease; and most importantly, when there was a possibility that the captain of your flight could be your senior in secondary school.
The knowledge of Nigeria that worked makes nostalgic craving for a glorious past when the national carrier was a symbol of national pride to Nigerians irresistible.
Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha’s ‘army of anything is possible’ laid the foundation for the death of a national dream with their commercialisation fraud designed for sharing state enterprises while NPN/NPP 1979 coalition that killed the Daily Times because of their greed, delivered the last blow that killed a thriving national carrier.
Nigeria Airways collapsed due to a crippling combination of chronic mismanagement, deep-seated corruption, severe overstaffing, political interference, and mounting debts exceeding $500 million. This fact was confirmed by aviation experts including Samuel Caulcrick, a former rector of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), who affirmed that the ‘decline of Nigeria Airways stemmed from a toxic mix of political interference, bureaucratic corruption, and capital starvation and not because government ownership was inherently flawed’. By 2003, the once-proud carrier was left with only a single operational aircraft, forcing the government to cease operations and liquidate the company.
Unfortunately, after the liberalisation of the aviation sector in the late 1980s by Babangida and his army of ‘no alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the domestic private airlines, including Okada Air, Kabo Air, GAS Air and Albarka Air operators they presented to us as alternative to Nigeria Airways as we were told was not the business of government, brought only grief to Nigerian air travellers.
Then there was the coming together of 16 domestic airlines during Obasanjo presidency that after a stakeholders meeting insisted the money they were making was not enough to pay cost of operation and service their debt to NCAA, NAMA and FAAN. After blackmailing government claiming they were indebted to the regulatory bodies and financial institutions to the tune of N325billion, they got government N35b bailout. But as it later turned out, the airline operators diverted the amount into other business while their indebtedness to AMCON went up to about $700m.
This was followed by another stakeholders meeting under Jonathan presidency where the managing director of Jimoh Ibrahim’s defunct Air Nigeria said ‘the keyway to ensure Nigerian airlines return to profitability is for federal government support in terms of finance or tax waivers’. The result was the injection of the $500m Chinese loan to the aviation sector.
Nigerians had hoped the injection of the new loan to the aviation sector despite the initial disagreement between Aviation Minister Stella Oduah, the CBN and the Bank of Industry as to whether the money was to be used to buy 30 brand new aircraft to re-fleet the airlines, will bring relief, it brought only grief to Nigeria airline users.
Today, not much has changed. Lamenting about the fate of airlines operators in Nigeria shortly before labour’s assault on his Air Peace last week, Onyema said ‘Over 50 airlines have come and gone. The owners of these airlines succeeded in other businesses, yet they failed in the airline business…. airlines should not be viewed as direct revenue-generating agencies for government’.
And to prove government, as usual is the target of domestic airline operators’ blackmail, Onyema added ‘The president has been supportive of Nigerian airlines and will never allow them to go down; what is happening today does not reflect his intentions. Around the world, governments are supporting their airlines’.
And to win public support, Onyema did not forget to remind us that ‘Going into aviation is not a piece of cake. It is an industry that is not very rewarding. It is capital-intensive, yet less rewarding. Today, we are facing a phase that poses existential threats. Except something drastic is done very quickly within the next 30 days, a lot of airlines might go extinct’.
That blackmail is not new. The only contradiction the domestic airline operators have not explained was why publicly run Nigerian Airways was so successfully managed that it became a symbol of national pride while their own story has been that of lamentation year after year.
However, despite my misgivings about the antics of our operators of domestic airlines, I believe investors especially those who are audacious enough to dabble into the aviation sector are men with heart of steel. Running an airline business can be doubly challenging not just because of potential to lose N2b in one day as Air Peace did last week, but that your airline is ‘operating an average of 80 flights daily across its domestic, regional, and international network, carrying an estimated 8,000 passengers ‘as Osifo-Whiskey, Air Peace spokesman disclosed last week.
How many public intellectuals, social critics and senior editors who easily get on edge if their driver failed to return back from school on time with their children or become prayer warriors when their flights experience turbulence in the air can survive what risk takers like Onyema goes through every day?
I remember my days at The Guardian. I was for five years on hypertensive drug. For fear of armed robbers’ attack on drivers of our distribution vehicles; I hardly slept most days until four in the morning when our last distribution van going to Abuja or Port Harcourt must have called to announce their safe arrival. I remember my two former managing directors, Lade Bonuola in the first place will not even leave the office until the wee hours of the morning while Dr Stanley Macebuh will start smoking furiously if there was no word from a returning distribution van driver.
Airline operators like Onyema and his tribe have something most of us don’t have. They wake up every morning and go to bed at night worrying not just about delayed flights, missing luggage but about thousands of airline passengers whose safety depends on their efficient management of their airlines daily.