Headline

Why Tinubu Should Dissolve Nigeria Air — Air Peace CEO, Onyema

Published

2 years ago

June 17, 2023

… Threatens To Expose Some Things

In what looked like a defence for his actions, the embattled former Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, who has been accused of orchestrating fraud in the unveiling of the country’s national carrier, ruffled some feathers during an interview with Arise TV, last week.

During that interview, Sen. Sirika made some comments which are now being termed false including that the reason Air Peace stopped plying the Dubai route was because it lacked capacity. Sen. Sirika’s allegation immediately attracted a statement from the management of Air Peace, debunking it as false. Also, in a bid to clarify issues more, in a right-of-reply kind of interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, the Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Mr Allen Onyema, maintained that claims made about his airline operation by Sen. Sirika, were nothing but false, noting that the ex-ministers statements were targeted at destroying the good image of Air Peace.

He went on to describe the former minister’s statements as “very unfortunate”, adding, “It’s very shameful for an ex-minister, somebody who, 20 years ago, was in the House of Representatives, he was a senator, and for the last eight years, he was a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, being paid from my taxpaying, he supervised my ministry, you expected him to be our chief marketer but that hasn’t happened.”

Onyema who stated that he wouldn’t expose a lot of things on national television for the love of the nation, however, decided he must point out certain things.

His words: “The ex-minister of Aviation came out to say indirectly or directly that the Airline he supervised is incompetent, leased two aircraft, paying five hundred thousand dollars monthly for 18 months, incurring 19 million dollars and he was peddling falsehood barefacedly, he never blinked, he was speaking as a matter of fact like that happened.

“Imagine the damage this minister had done to the image and reputation of Air Peace.

“Meanwhile he was peddling pure falsehood. How do we now believe every other thing he said on that day?”

To set the record straight, Onyema explained that “Air Peace doesn’t have two 777s; Air Peace has three and those three were out rightly purchased. Two of those planes are in fact, X Emirates.

“One is X Singapore Airlines with everything you can think of in those planes outrightly purchased by Air Peace.

“Therefore, we never paid rental to anybody, we never incurred…, in the first place, you can’t even use 250,000 to rent a 777; how much do you pay for a single aircraft not to talk of a 777.

“So this is a minister trying to fool the entire nation in his desperate bid to fool everybody to win the nation.

“He was peddling falsehood on Air Peace so, how do we as a nation believe every other thing he was saying out there?

“The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority that regulates us is there, you can contact them.

“He was in charge, he signed the import permit. You cannot import any aircraft into the country without the minister of aviation’s approving.

“So he knew quite well that those planes were not leased; they were not rented, they were fully paid for.

“But he told the entire world that we leased those planes just to make us look bad and at the same time, praise Ethiopia, his partners.”

Genesis of the controversies

Onyema further explained that the history of the whole struggle, contrary to what the minister had been saying, was about having a national career. According to him, a national career is a moribund idea worldwide and as such, they knew it was going to “fall and fail like a pack of cards”.

“According to him, most nations have moved away from national carriers due to huge debt portfolios and issues of mismanagement.

“Why should Nigeria in 2023 be going backwards instead of forward? All they needed to do is to strengthen the ease of doing business so that people of means, private concerns of means will come and invest in aviation industry.

“We are not fighting for ourselves. They thought we were afraid of competition. When they wanted to do the national carrier, we made comments but most people stood against it.

“The whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. Our members told Air Peace to apply but when we went to the website we were blocked,” he explained.

The Air Peace CEO further disclosed that he and his team that sued the federal government challenging the launch of Air Nigeria did not withdraw the suit, and the court did not strike it out either, noting that the former minister brought in Ethiopian Airline to make a mockery of the judicial process.

“We went to court, those four suits were meant to demean the local operators in favour of this charade they’ve put up with Ethiopia. Even at some point, ex-president Muhammadu Buhari shot down this National Air project at a time.

“One man just hoodwinked the country into believing that this is needed.

“All they needed to do was to set up a strong light carrier and if you provide enabling environment, more people will invest.

”He told the world that Air Peace was no longer going to Dubai because of low capacity.”

Still miffed with Sen. Sirika’s claims, Onyema said, “Whoever advised senator Hadi Sirika to come on national television, to defend the indefensible has not done him any good.

“The whole world knows we started operations into Dubai July 5, 2019. We never stopped until Covid, when everybody stopped.

“When Covid stopped, we started. UAE decided for whatever reason, to stop the issuance of visas to Nigeria; we stopped going to Dubai, Emirates stopped coming to Nigeria.

“Neither Air Peace nor Emirates is plying this route now. So why should a minister of government barefacedly, come on television to speak falsehood because you want to paint the indigenous operators black and blue.”

Responding to the statement that his airline lacks capacity even after the tremendous role he played in bringing Nigerians in foreign countries home during covid-19 and recently Sudan, Onyema questioned how the ex-minister could have said such.

He recounted that when “The entire world shut down during the lockdown in 2020 because of covid-19, Air Peace went to China on three occasions, bringing back Nigerians; that is a 14, 15 hours non-stop flight, deploying our 777s to bring Nigerians back to their homeland proudly.

“Three times, yet Air Peace doesn’t have capacity? Air Peace also went to India 12 times bringing Nigerians back home.”

He disclosed further that “most Nigerians in India, didn’t have money to pay Ethiopia (air line) to bring them back, I deployed my jets to bring them back.

“Those we brought back later put it in the newspaper to thank us because we brought them back free of charge.”

Onyema also recounted helping to evacuate Nigerians from other countries such as Indonesia, London, South Africa and South Sudan.

“He said after flying into the UK to bring home Nigerians during covid-19, his permit was not renewed for a second trip,” adding that, “I paid for Nigerians, hired a European carrier to bring Nigerians home.

“The Federal Government praised Air Peace for doing that as well as deploying their 777s on two occasions to rescue Nigerians during xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

“Nigeria was respected worldwide for what Air Peace did on their behalf.”

Also recalling his contributions towards helping to fight insecurity in the country, he said, “I have always contributed to the well-being of this country and all I get from some government officials is this kind of thing; they fight you from different angles.”

Why President Tinubu should dissolve Nigeria Air

While calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dissolve Nigeria Air, Onyema faulted the shareholding arrangement of the airline noting that the leadership of the entire management of the airline is twisted in favour of Ethiopia.

”When you look at this Nigeria Air thing, look at the shareholding, I have it here, the shareholding agreement, without SAHCO, Nigeria would have been in trouble.

“The leadership of the entire management, the DFO, the CEO, all the management positions the headship- Ethiopia, deputies- Nigeria.

“Then, look at the shareholding in Ethiopia 49%.

“There’s a company called Fairfax, who is this Fairfax? It’s another Ethiopian (company), owned by an Ethiopian; they are transaction advisers and they’re going to get 3%.

“They’re going to get 1.45% of the shareholding capital, which is put at 250 million. Ethiopia will bring 122 million but not as cash but as rentals,” he stated.

The Air Peace boss further condemned the shareholding arrangement that favours Ethiopia which he said, is not contributing a penny to the airline adding that “It is only the Nigerian companies that are going to bring money, SAHCO and MRS.

“I have it here, the document is written here. Ethiopia is not bringing a penny into Nigeria. Ethiopia will pay rentals for their own plane, it is written here in black and white, pay for rentals for their own plane for five years. So even if they pay the N122 thousand, Air Peace alone is worth over $2 billion.

“As I speak to you, Boeing is in my office now for the delivery of our 737 Max, which is costing over a billion dollars. Ethiopia is bringing nothing and they’re going to earn 49% of your country’s wealth.”

“I call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately dissolve this charade called Nigeria Air and start his own thing.”

He disclosed that before this charade, what Ethiopian Airline did with the National carrier, the Ethiopian Airline also wanted to do with him, revealing that they approached him for a deal that would earn him royalties and make him swim in millions of Dollars for life with the Ethiopian Airline supplying the planes but he said after considering that other airlines will die, jobs will be lost, etc, that he turned down the deal just for national interest.

VANGUARD

Headline

Sweden To Charge 18-year-old Over IS Terror Plot

Published

1 day ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said Tuesday it intended to charge an 18-year-old man for planning a terrorist act in Stockholm on behalf of the Islamic State group.

According to prosecutors, the planning took place between August 2024 and February 2025.

“We believe the purpose of the preparations was to induce serious fear in the population, in the name of the Islamic State. The criminal act could have seriously harmed Sweden,” Deputy Chief Prosecutor Henrik Olin said in a statement.

Prosecutors did not provide details of the plan but said the man was also suspected of “preparation for serious crimes under the act on flammable and explosive goods and training for terrorism”.

Prosecutors said they planned to file the charges on Thursday and that a press conference would be held the same day.

The young man will also be charged alongside a 17-year-old boy with attempted murder in Germany in August 2024.

Both of them are also suspected of “participation in a terrorist organisation,” according to the statement.

The man was arrested in Stockholm on February 11 and has been in custody since then.

AFP

Headline

US Shutdown Hits 35 Days, Tying Longest In History

Published

1 day ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

The US government shutdown entered its 35th day on Tuesday, matching a record set during President Donald Trump’s first term, as lawmakers voiced hope over progress behind the scenes to end the dispute.

The federal closure appears almost certain to become the longest in history, with no breakthroughs expected before it goes into its sixth week at midnight — although there were fragile signs in Congress that an off-ramp is closer than ever.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune set the buoyant mood music on Monday when he told reporters he felt “optimistic” that newly energised talks between warring Republicans and Democrats could end in a deal before next week.

The government has been grinding to a halt since Congress failed to pass a bill to keep federal departments and agencies funded past the end of the last financial year on September 30.

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think any of us expected that it would drag on this long. We didn’t believe, we couldn’t have imagined,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference arranged to mark the six-week milestone.

“It’s now tied for the longest shutdown in US history. And we didn’t think we’d have to come in here every single day — day after day after day — and repeat the obvious facts to the American people and to put on display every day what is happening here.”

Some 1.4 million federal workers — from air traffic controllers to park wardens — have been placed on enforced leave without pay or made to work for nothing, while vital welfare programs and even paychecks for active-duty troops are under threat.

Both sides remain dug in over the main sticking point — health care spending.

Democrats say they will only provide votes to end the funding lapse after a deal has been struck to extend expiring insurance subsidies that make health care affordable for millions of Americans.

But Republicans insist they will only address health care once Democrats have voted to switch the lights back on in Washington.

While both sides’ leadership have shown little appetite for compromise, there have been signs of life on the back benches, with a handful of moderate Democrats working to find an escape hatch.

A separate bipartisan group of four centrist House members unveiled a compromise framework Monday for lowering health insurance costs.

Democrats believe that millions of Americans seeing skyrocketing premiums as they enroll onto health insurance programs for next year will pressure Republicans into seeking compromise.

But Trump has held firm on refusing to negotiate, telling CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that he would “not be extorted.”

The president has sought to apply his own pressure to force Democrats to cave, by threatening mass layoffs of federal workers and using the shutdown to target progressive priorities.

Last week his administration threatened to cut off a vital aid programme that helps 42 million Americans pay for groceries for the first time in its more than 60-year history, before the move was blocked in court.

And the president has returned to a familiar playbook of demanding the elimination of the Senate filibuster — the 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation — so Republicans can pass government funding themselves.

“Terminate the filibuster now, end the ridiculous shutdown immediately, and then, most importantly, pass every wonderful Republican policy that we have dreamt of for years, but never gotten,” Trump fulminated in an all-caps social media post.

Preserving the filibuster — which senators say protects the voice of the minority — is one of the few issues on which Republicans are willing to defy Trump and radical reform seems highly unlikely.

“The votes aren’t there,” Thune told reporters on Monday.

AFP

Headline

China Backs Nigeria, Warns Against Foreign Interference

Published

1 day ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

China has urged the international community to respect Nigeria’s sovereignty following a US threat of military action.

The Chinese government reiterated its support for President Bola Tinubu’s administration, commending the government for guiding the country along a development path tailored to its national conditions.

According to a report sourced from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China’s website, the Spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, stated this at a press briefing on Tuesday in Beijing.

She said, “As Nigeria’s strategic partner, China opposes any attempt by foreign powers to use religion or human rights as a pretext to meddle in another country’s internal affairs or impose sanctions and military threats.”

Recently, the US threatened Nigeria with possible military action due to the alleged persecution of Christians in the country.

The United States President, Donald Trump, had threatened to deploy military forces in Nigeria if the alleged genocide against Christians is not stopped in the country.