Keyamo vows to deliver Fly Nigeria Act before leaving office

Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development

Sade Williams/Business a.m.

Festus Keyamo, the current minister of aviation and aerospace development has vowed that the legislation known as the Fly Nigeria Act that has been in the works for more than 15 years will be birthed during his tenure.

Keyamo, speaking at the weekend, lamented that the document which is expected to make it mandatory for government financed air transportation of its personnel, contractors, grantees and properties to be carried by a Nigerian air flag carrier has yet to materialise more than 15 years after it was first proposed.

Speaking at a one day “Stakeholders’ Engagement on the Legal Framework for the Fly Nigeria Bill and Related Enabling Legislation”, in Abuja, the minister said he will rally all the major stakeholders to push for the bill to be signed into law.

Babatunde Omotoba, a former minister of aviation, had said the bill was first put together more than 15 years ago while he was minister in charge of the ministry and commended Keyamo for the new drive and passion to finally bring the bill to reality.

Allen Onyema, vice president and spokesperson of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) and chairman of Air Peace, along with Obiora Okonkwo, chairman of United Nigeria Airline, described the move as a new dawn for the country’s aviation and domestic airlines in Nigeria.

“This has been on the cards for some time, for many years, more than 15 years because I think my predecessor, Chief Omotoba served more than 15 years ago. So you can imagine that this bill was taken to council more than 15 years ago and yet it did not see the light of day. Under my tenure it will happen,” Keyamo vowed.

According to him, “We just want to get things done.”

He said when he came into office he met a few things hanging on his desk, including the Cape Town Convention, the cry of the Aviation Working Group, and all the proposals that have been made to former governments to develop especially the local industry.

“What we did was to say, look, let us revive all of these dead things on my table that would help or that will help to develop our local industry.

“And one of them, of course, is the Fly Nigeria Act. Luckily Olisa Agbakoba was also talking to me about it. He had brought a proposal. This had been on the card like the Cabotage Act too. It’s like also the Cabotage Act you see in the blue economy sector too. So I wonder, I was telling myself [that] if the Cabotage Act had been passed to favour ships that fly [the] Nigerian flag and this had been passed long ago, what is the problem with aviation? It tells you that there’s a certain external cabal in the aviation industry that seeks to destroy your own indigenous markets so that they can come and feed on that market.”

Keyoma suggested that there is a global conspiracy against the enactment of the legislation, but noted that you have to be smart to see it.

He said: “Look at the entire African continent. Just look at it. All the foreign airlines in the world feed on the African markets without the competition of African airlines, without fair competition from African airlines. And they will ensure that the aviation markets in Africa remain stunted. Especially in a big country like Nigeria, they will ensure that it remains stunted so that they will continue to feed on your markets,” he said.

According to him, Air France is coming here full, going back full. Both sides are Nigerians inside. You expect that when they are leaving their country, okay, many of them would have foreigners coming in and Nigerians going out. But both sides are Nigerians coming in and going out. Delta, United from America, Lufthansa, British Airways, name all of them, all of them, all the foreign airlines. We thank them for their partnership and all that [and] I’m not condemning them.

“I’m saying that we must also develop our own to compete fairly. We just want to compete fairly. Qatar, Emirates, all of them. So the global conspiracy, it is in aviation you know politics all over the world, global policy, aero politics. They do it in such a way very cleverly that they don’t want your local market, your local indigenous airlines to, you know, to grow so that they keep feeding on that market. So it is for us to be wise enough to see this and to come up with policies, policies, policies that will then empower our own local operators to match them on the negotiation table.

“And this is one of the latest in this series of actions we lined up. More are coming, though, to empower them and to make sure they survive. To say how do we then create the market for them.We are saying the summary of the Fly Nigeria Act is that every government funded trip, every government, whether what ministry or agency at all, if there is a Nigerian flag carrier flying that route, even locally, regionally, internationally, continentally, you must patronise the Nigerian flag carrier first before any foreign carrier. That’s a summary, but you know the details, the devil is in the details. You will see the details, I will say that.

“Even in connecting flights, if the first leg, if you are going to the U.S. and you want to pass through London and the first leg, a Nigerian flag carrier is traveling the first leg of that trip, but not flying the second leg, you must also fly the first leg with a Nigerian flag carrier and connect an international air carrier. So what we are doing with this bill is even if the routes don’t exist, we are creating the market by the bill.

“We are creating the market because once you see that Nigerians are flying a particular route every day for one thing or the other, either for training, you know these agencies they go for a lot of training and all of that. Or even Umrah Hajj. Our dear Muslim brothers, you see what is happening with Hajj.

“Half of the airlines that operate Hajj are foreign airlines. So with this bill, all our Hajj pilgrims, every other pilgrim, must first satisfy the slots given to the Nigerian carriers first before we divide with another person.

“It’s a way to grow the market and like I said with the routes, you know, [that] are not flown by Nigerian carriers; once this bill is passed, they will apply to fly that route, knowing that the market has been created for that route. And for people who don’t want to even lease aircrafts to us, they will come and say “Nigerian AOC holders, can you take my aircraft, I know that you have routes to fly now.

“They will come and be begging with the aircraft. It’s a way to develop the market and develop routes for our people. That’s the summary of this. So we’ll set up a technical session. We have a pre-draft resolution here. The National Assembly members are waiting for the bill to get there.The senators, they are just waiting. It’s for us to set up a technical committee. We agreed in principle that this is good for us, good for aviation, you know, local operators especially.We can look at it. Then I take it to the FEC.

“Once the president endorses it, we’ll convince them in the FEC, it becomes an executive bill. I think it should go in as an executive bill. It becomes easy. I want to go there, get to the National Assembly, and go to a public hearing. I don’t think public hearing will be too much. All of us will just go down and support it at the public hearing. And then first, second, third reading, it becomes law. And we’re in business. We’re in business already, you know. And that will just be my happiness.”

Earlier a representative from the Olisa Agbakoba Legal firm had presented the proposed bill titled, “A Proposal on Aviation Reform by Enacting The Fly Nigeria Act” to participants.