By Eddy Odivwri

He sounded clear and confident. He spoke with some air of authority and magisterial conviction. Nothing on his visage betrayed the fact that we are zomming into another trial-and-error engagement. It is his second effort, so we are likely to think all loopholes have been blocked and all minefields have been identified and cleared off. It is the sixth time the issue of the airline had been tabled at the Federal Executive Council (FEC). In 2018, efforts to launch the airline had gone pretty far, including organizing a roadshow in London, before it was cancelled and suspended. Now we are back to it again, as it scents reloaded. But the content of what the Minister of Aviation, Mr Hadi Sirika, said are full of fog.

First, Mr Sirika says operation will start in April next year, about five months away. Then that the airline will lease three aircraft to get started. It plans to generate, wait for it, 70,000 jobs! Really? 70,000 jobs to work on three aircraft?

He drove home the point when he noted that the workforce will be higher than the entire federal civil service put together. Even far more established airlines which have been in operation for over two decades, do not have as much as 70,000. How will a borrow-borrow airline begin its work wwith 70,000 workers? We have not forgotten all the factors that combined to kill Nigeria Airways.

He also talked about the ownership structure. I am particualry glad that the private sector will own 46 per cent while the federal government will own just about five per cent, while “strategic Partners” will own 49 per cent. I fear that no informed businessman will allow that heavy workforce at the take off of the airline.

If Akwa-Ibom State can run an airline successfully, and is already increasing its fleet, I do not see why Nigeria, the whole Nigeria, will start off by leasing airplanes. Would this not bore a hole into the asset base of the airline? If it has taken the ministry three fulkl years to re-strategise, the final outcome does not quite bespeak of a deep and clinical thinking. And that is why many Nigerians are worried that this should not be another wild goose chase.

Originally published at Thisday