Sirika defends single African Air Transport Market

..says Nigeria ‘ll reap bountifully

Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika yesterday defended the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) which Nigeria recently signed, would be the greatest beneficiary.

Speaking with journalists at the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA) Lagos, Sirika noted that the need to take full advantage of the SAATM informed the decision of the Federal Government to establish a private sector-driven national carrier.

The national carrier he said would become a reality in the first term of President Muhammadu Buhari administration, saying it would be the biggest in Africa.

He disclosed that Lufthansa Consortium was dropped as transaction advisor because of its affiliation with Lufthansa Airline even as they gave a condition not to pay tax which he said was against Nigerian law.

He said: “At the time Nigeria was pushing for this SAATM, you and I know we had Nigeria Airways and we thought we would take advantage of it.
“Now, we don’t and our airlines for one reason or another have not grown to that capacity and this is why the government felt that we should set in motion to create a robust carrier that would take advantage of this SAATM for the benefit of the Nigerian people.

“Nigeria is among the first 11 countries that went to Yamousoukro and took a decision to liberalize the sector and open the sky for Africa and this means growth. This means development.
‘This means more jobs. This means more security and this means more connectivity. This means more passenger experience and comfort.

“Now arising from that and Nigeria being a signatory to that, the Single African Air Transport Market became the issue and Nigeria also joined to become the first 23 countries to make that solemn declaration on Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) and I think Nigeria with population of 173m people, half the size of West Africa, would be the greatest beneficiary to this.”

“I think is getting their priority right and doing the business model that would bring money for them. Everybody wants to run into scheduled passenger flights. There is a lot they can do in aviation’.

On Dana Airline incident, the minister said it was just a minor incident, saying it is being investigated.

“Now that is well documented and NCAA is presently investigating it and the reason why NCAA is investigating is because it falls within their purview to investigate minor incident of this nature”.
He said, “If it had been serious accident or serious damage to the aircraft it would have been the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) investigating it.”

” I’ve been following up since yesterday when I learnt of it with NCAA. They are investigating it and within very few hours, within one day also, they will come out with a report and we will explain to Nigeria what happened. And I want to use this opportunity to say that what has happened though very scary and uncomfortable, it is an incident that is minor and that kind of thing would not happen in-flight at altitude as to cause an accident or serious degree incident. So we thank God for that. The airlines ate being investigated and NCAA is doing its job and I cannot be preemptive of their investigation and the investigation and I hope the investigation would not last longer than a day or two”