The Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu made the best choice in appointing Festus Keyamo as the Minister for Aviation and Aerospace Development’
He said Keyamo is revolutionizing Nigeria’s aviation sector, making it easier for local airlines to thrive on.
Onyema said this in an interview with a national television on Sunday where he discussed the benefits of Nigeria signing the Cape Town Convention (CTC) Practice Directions for the aviation sector, saying that it will reduce the price of airfares, as well as interconnect Nigeria, which will in turn cause a revolution in the economy.
According to the Air Peace boss, “The significance of the CTC practice directions will allow Nigerian airlines to dry lease aircraft. Other countries do not buy their aircraft outright. They lease these aircraft from the manufacturing companies via leasing financial companies who finance the acquisitions, and lease the aircrafts back to the airlines for a number of years. However, in Nigeria, one has to buy the aircraft outright.
“The money we use to buy one brand new plane can get me about 50 or 40 aircrafts on dry lease. With the signing of this practice direction now, it means the leasing world now will start leasing aircrafts to Nigeria”, he said
He further explained: “If I spent $80 million buying one of my brand new planes, I ordered 13 of the E2095, five have already arrived in Nigeria. The amount of money expended on that five will give me about 200 aircraft. So, I don’t need to amass so much money now to start acquiring planes.
“If every Nigerian – the least of Nigerian airlines with five planes or three planes, the cost of acquiring those three aircraft, whether used or brand new, even used ones, could afford them 20 or 30 aircraft.”
“It will help the entire Nigerian airline industry. We acquire this with ease. Now, because you’ve not expended a lot of money, you’re not paying interest at 35% for a huge sum of money that will affect the bottom line positively, and bring the fare, the prices down appreciably.”
“This will also increase interconnectivity, because you have a lot of planes. You don’t need to come to Abuja or Lagos from Port Harcourt to go to Kano. When you have so many planes flying, you can do Port-Harcourt-Kano directly. You can do Calabar-Enugu, you can do Enugu to Ilorin. You can do Yola to Maidiguri, because you will be able to acquire the type of aircraft that will give you such stretch”, he said
For him: “What Keyamo has done is nothing short of revolutionary. It has never happened to us before. By midwifing the signing of this practice direction, he has kind of helped the airlines, especially the local airlines now to pep up their capacity.”
“I said some time ago, and I told Mr. President when he invited me that the ease of doing business in the Aviation sector has come back; thanks to the kind of appointment you made. Festus Keyamo is nothing short of awesome”, he enthused.
“I told Mr. President that when people were criticizing Keyamo for going to Airbus, on the sideline that the main thing that took him to Airbus was this kind of thing. It also took Ketyamo to Boeing three weeks ago, and Air Peace was there with him in America, where he was brokering all these deals.
“I also told Mr. President that at the end of the day, you will celebrate making Keyamo your aviation minister. Keyamo has been in the trenches out there trying to get this thing sorted, midwifed it, and the vice-president was there to make sure everything happened to the benefit of the country.”
“The president has caused a revolution in the economy already with this. Once we move in, we are going to interconnect this country, we are going to open up this country, and that is opening up the economy, agricultural products will find their way to the cities and other places.
“We are going to dominate the entire West Coast and Central Africa. The resilience of the average Nigerian entrepreneur will not be called into question. What the President has done now was to give us that platform to explode. You will see what is going to happen,” Onyema said.
