Group CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, Mesfin Tasew, said the establishment of Nigeria’s national airline has been politicized.
He said it was the intention of Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest airline, to help the government establish a profitable airline, but the process has been politicized because Nigerian airlines opposed it.
This was the first time the airline’s CEO had spoken out since its selection as an equity partner in the Nigerian Air project was canceled.
It would be recalled that the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, suspended the establishment of Nigeria Airways when he assumed office a year ago.
However, on August 5, 2024, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal Court in Lagos, in a ruling on a suit brought by the Registered Administrator of Nigerian Airlines (AON), issued a ruling that restrains the airline from any act, action and/or decision that: In selling its shares in Nigerian Airways and its business in Ethiopian Airlines, the company “were in violation of relevant laws, including the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020; SEC Nigeria Consolidated Rules & Regulations 2013 (as amended in 2022); the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Convention; Civil Aviation Act; Public Procurement Act; among others.”
The judge granted most of the relief sought by the plaintiffs, including, among other things, the cessation of the entire Nigerian Airways bidding process.
However, in a follow-up interview with Journalists, the Ethiopian Airlines CEO said the project to help Nigeria establish an airline was complete. He said: “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.
“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 politicized.
“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.”
The Airline Operators in Nigeria (AON), through its President, Alhaji Abdulmunaf Yunusa Sarina, declared that the Nigerian Air announced by former Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, was a sham.
He said, “It was also a surreptitious plan to kill Nigerian indigenous airlines and handover the commonwealth of Nigeria’s huge aviation market with over 85 Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASAs) around the world to Ethiopian Airlines through the back door without investing a penny into the Nigerian economy in an attempt to satisfy the whims and caprices of some selfish and unpatriotic individuals.”
