The Insight by Lateef Adewole
In the last one week or so, there has been a feeling of ‘déjà vu’ in Nigeria. I personally felt like that. What could have been responsible for such feeling? It was Air Peace! Why? Air Peace is not a newly established airline. In fact, this should be their 11th year since they started operation in Nigeria and have been doing great, quite amazingly, beyond expectations of many Nigerians, given previous experiences with many indigenous airline operators, which are sometimes, bitter. So, what then?
It was all about the inaugural flight of Air Peace to London, Gatwick Airport, directly from Nigeria. This happened last Saturday 30th of March. As expected, it was a ‘celebrity’ flight. So, there was much noise about it, with numerous videos circulating on social media, showing the passengers, many of whom are VIPs, celebrities, top government officials and political bigwigs. The Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN), was on it personally. And his counterpart in Trade and Investment. Why did it attract so much attention?
It was neither because it was Air Peace nor because that’s the first Nigerian airline that would fly to London. It was all because of the prevailing circumstances that heralded it. For months or years, no Nigerian carrier has been allowed direct flight between Nigeria and London, since Arik Airline stopped flying that route. Ever since Air Peace began operation and expanding to international routes, they have made serious efforts to get back that route, with stiff opposition from UK aviation authority.
This is the same country, whose indigenous airlines like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, have about 20 frequencies into Nigeria but refused to even grant single frequency to Air Peace. What that meant was that, while British airlines were granted access to Nigeria’s airports to fly into the country as many as 20 times per week, while Nigerian airline has no single access to fly into any of the airports in UK. What an absurdity!
This was despite that Air Peace had done all needed and met all necessary requirements. I watched the Chairman of Air Peace, Dr. Allen Onyema, lamented the degrading treatment they meted on them in the course of their official correspondence while requesting for the slot. They were routinely ignored. At a time, they were told to stop bothering them and they stopped replying their mails, that they will reply to their request at their own convenience. What an insult.
So, when Air Peace eventually got the slot, though into Gatwick, not Heathrow, the premium airport, it was a great relief and called for that celebration within the organisation in particular. However, that’s not the real gist and the reason for the ‘déjà vu’ feeling. Immediately, Air Peace announced their flight schedule from Nigeria to London and the fares, Nigerians were shocked at how ridiculously low when compared with fares from other foreign airlines. That sent ripples through the industry as it was less than 35% of what they have been charging Nigerians for the same route for years. What a criminal rip-off.
The shocking part was that within 24 hours of Air Peace air fares announcement, all of them crashed their air fares by over 60% immediately. How could airlines that have been charging N15m to 17m for a first class ticket suddenly drop to N5m to 7m because Air Peace fixed their own at N4m? So, this was possible all along but they were stealing massively from Nigerians all these years with impunity, and possibly, local connivance with our own people in the aviation regulatory bodies.
All this while, we have agencies responsible for regulating that industry, to protect passengers, especially Nigerians, from being exploited in their country, and by foreigners at that, yet, what did they do? Nothing. Will they say they did not know the justifiable amount that a 6 hour flight from Nigeria to London should cost even with all the factors peculiar to Nigeria, if not that there were compromises here and there? That was one of the ways Nigerians have been paying for institutional corruption. It couldn’t have been for nothing.
All along, flights from farther countries are cheaper than from Nigeria, to the same destination. Nigerians do travel all the way to other countries to fly out because it is cheaper from there. As ridiculous as it could sound, people can travel to South Africa, a 5 hour plus journey, to go and board a London flight from there that will take 11 hours plus, which still flying back near Nigerian air space, totalling about 17 hours instead of a direct flight between Nigeria and London that will take just 6 hours. They do so because it can still cheaper in some instances. Can someone beat that? Nigerians look for all manners of connecting flights, spending many extra hours of suffering, just to get more affordable flight tickets.
Some will have to go from Nigeria to Doha, on Qatar Airline, to Addis Ababa on Ethiopia Airline, to Cairo on Egypt Air, to Abu Dhabi on Emirate, where they will be forced to spend many hours of inconvenient waiting to connect another flight, before they can be taken to their final destinations. All these because we don’t have indigenous airlines of ours doing these routes. Where we want to, the other countries are frustrating them from getting in, contrary to the universal principle of reciprocity in international diplomacy, which is applicable to all the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) too.
Sadly, these countries violate these BASA, trample upon Nigeria and Nigerians, and nothing would happened to them. No consequence. As the Yorubas would say: “t’iya nla ba gbeni sanle, kekeeke a si ma g’ori eni.” Since Nigeria has remained a sleeping giant that refused to arise all these years, all kind of minions of a nation disrespect her. And most time, with the compromise of leadership in Nigeria who are supposed to act swiftly and decisively to deal with them.
This was the way UAE behaved with us. Having allowed their flag carrier, Emirate Airline 21 frequencies into Nigeria, it was the same Air Peace they denied just 3 frequencies. That led to the suspension of Emirate flights into Nigeria when theirs was also reduced to one like they gave Air Peace, and the subsequent diplomatic brouhaha about visa ban on Nigerians based on some flimsy excuses. However, that was the way to go. Enough of this disrespect all over.
The truth of the matter is that, all these foreign airlines know the huge market they will lose if Nigeria suspends their operations in the country. It is a fact that as the country with the largest black population on earth, one of every six Africans is a Nigerian. Nigerians are the most widely and frequently travelled in Africa, whether for fun or for serious businesses. Nigerians, by our nature of insatiable taste for foreign things, which is not something to be proud of actually, we travel around the world for holidays and catching fun.
On the serious side, many Nigerians have business interests and partnerships that take them around the world too. On education and healthcare tourism, no African country can surpass us. In-between these, is the “japa” syndrome. Nigerians are the highest migrants to foreign countries like Europe, America, Canada and even Asian and Arabian countries from Africa. Majority of these journeys are done by air. So, as far as Africa is concerned, the market is in Nigeria. And these airlines and their home countries know this. But they chose to disrespect and cheat us like that since they believe there will be no consequences for their actions because of corruption within the system. I hope this should begin to change.
Why did we have that ‘déjà vu’ feeling? Something like we have been here before or had similar scenerio in the past? It was the reminder of the early years of the GSM in Nigeria. The feeling that Nigerians have when other foreign airlines began to crash their flight fares because Air Peace, a wholly indigenous airline, fixed their prices, was similar to what we felt when Globalcom (Glo) entered the GSM telecommunications industry in 2003. Many ‘Gen Z’ and indomie generation might not understand what I am talking about.
In 2001, only two foreign telecommunication companies (telcos) were able to meet up with the licensing rounds and started GSM operations and one indigenous. They were MTN from South Africa, Econet from Zimbabwe and MTEL, from NITEL of Nigeria. Then, to own a SIM card was like wanting to buy a car. It cost a fortune. Same SIM card that the GSM operators were giving away for free at a later stage, was once sold as high as N50,000. in year 2003. The value of that money can only be appreciated if converted to dollars. Then, dollar was N135. So, today, dollar is almost ten times that amount. Therefore, that SIM would have cost the equivalent of almost N500,000. today. Imagine that!
Apart from that criminally outrageous cost of ordinary SIM card, the telcos charged us N50. per minute. If converted to today’s value. That should be almost N500. per minute, something that is within N10. now. Upon that, they insisted that per second billing was impossible. Therefore, even if it was only one second call that you made and it dropped due to bad network, you will be charged N50. That was heist actually. We battled and lived with that until Glo bombed them.
As it entered, Glo crashed the price of SIM card to less than 20% of the existing price. It also immediately introduced per second billing for calls at lower rates. Nigerians were thrown into frenzy, just as we felt about Air Peace flight fares now. Immediately, the other foreign telcos which had been ripping us off before, crashed their SIM prices too. Within a week of Glo incursion, they started per second billing of calls at reduced rates which they denied us in previous two years.
Glo has remained strong ever since then, giving them a run for their money, despite their international backings from their home countries and governments. We saw how concerned South Africa government was when MTN had problem with Nigerian government about unpaid fine some years ago. The company’s share price began to nosedive that they had to suspend trading it on their stock exchange during the period. That’s the power that Nigeria wield but we don’t know how to use it or not using it appropriately.
Ironically, while most international companies get massive supports from their home countries and governments to strive in foreign lands, same are not always enjoy by serious indigenous companies from their own government. Rather, the ‘system’, which include the political authority and civil service, sometimes, work against their own, in favour of foreigners, for kickbacks. Otherwise, what Onyema said they experienced on their return to Nigeria from London at the MMIA New terminal, Lagos, shouldn’t have happened. He said they were directed to very far and abandoned runway in the bush. And would have to use some rickety buses to convey their passengers on international flight to the arrival.
He said this would have taken them about 9 hours. It was done to frustrate them and cast Air Peace in bad light on their first return flight, on their home soil for that matter. By now, I expected that all the people involved in that shenanigans should have been fired for irresponsibility and economic sabotage. Such behaviour should no longer be tolerated. These are things that killed many past indigenous airlines, but for the tenacity of Dr. Onyema, Air Peace could have gone the way of others, given the challenges it has faced in the past 10 years. I have been following their evolution over the years.
That was how EFCC was used to hound Dr. Mike Adenuga for some years too, few years after the launch of Glo. I knew because I worked in one of his group of companies. He was on self-exile for those years that the political leadership of the country then wanted to bring him down by all means, for whatever reason. I am not saying that he was guilty or not, of whatever they wanted him for at the time, but it should not have been to the extent we saw. His house was attacked in a gestapo-like in the middle of the night why gunning for his arrest, hounded like a common criminal. A whole “Guru” himself. That was despicable.
So, the concept of ‘buy naija to grow naira’ is far deeper and wider than being mouthed. It is a critical step if we ever want to see our country great, with nearly everything resting on it. It must be a well established and strictly implemented government policy from ‘top to bottom’. This can only be achieved by sincere leadership because compromises start from the top. When we say ‘buy naija’, it shouldn’t be misconstrued as simply buying things from Nigerian market. It should be what are wholly or nearly, made in Nigeria, from start to finish. It is only then that Nigeria can get real and full value from such purchases.
Otherwise, we might actually be buying China or Hong-Kong, or UK or Japan or India, thinking we are buying Naija. In the final analysis, we will be growing those countries economies. For instance, it could be misleading seeing a woman gorgeously dressed in lace materials, complemented with the Yoruba traditional wear of Aso-Oke. She would seem to have exemplified ‘buy naija’ while in reality, all those materials were imported into Nigeria. They were not produced here, despite being our traditional wears. Same as Isi-Agu of the Igbos which are now being imported. Also, the guinea brocade and Ankara, won in the north and other parts of Nigeria, most are imported. So, we are really not buying any naija in these instances.
From growing cotton to the end product, which is the clothing materials, from hide and skin to the final leader shoes, bags, etc, from cocoa to chocolates, from crude oil to petrol, diesel, kerosine, and other refined byproducts, from raw mined gold to gold jewelries and beauty accessories, from steel to cars, and so on, with all the value additions in the chain taking place on the soil of Nigeria, buying these final consumable products is when we can truly say we have ‘bought naija’. The implication of this is also enormous beyond simply growing Naira. This is just representative.
Overall, once we can locally produce what we consume and consume what we produce after adding values, and export any excess, we will earn foreign exchange, which will increase our foreign reserve, and strengthen our currency (grow naira). The less demand for dollars to import the essentials will also do the same to naira. The productivity in the economy will increase, employment will increase, personal income will improve, companies will contribute more to national income through taxes, GDP will increase, infrastructures will improve, life will be better, the country will be great. This is a garmouth of things that Nigeria and Nigerians stand to benefit from ‘buying naija to grow naira’ concept. It is a key to our economic emancipation. But, are we ready from leadership to the led? This is the critical question.
If government bans all importation of top foreign cars from entering Nigeria, their manufacturers will land in Nigeria to set up factories within two years. I can bet on it. They know what they will lose. Same as many goods we import into the country. But who are their biggest customers and consumers? The rich and elites who hold the power to take these actions. Will they? I doubt. Imagine If all MDAs in FG, 36 states and 774 LGAs must only use cars produced in Nigeria, what would happen to that local automobile industry? It will explode (literally). Will or can they do it? I’m not sure. This is the problem. Leadership!
In all, I want to congratulate Air Peace, their Chairman, Dr. Allen Onyema, their management, and Nigerians as a whole, for a new dawn in flying to London. Nigerians must resist every attempt to frustrate Air Peace because, it will happen. They should be supported, irrespective of any initial imperfection that travellers might experience. Allowing them into only Gatwick, and not Heathrow, was part of the grand design to frustrate them. I read in “Losing My Virginity”, an autobiography by Sir Richard Bradson, where he detailed how he and his Virgin Atlantic airline were nearly crushed by British Airways when he entered into aviation business in UK in the 70s. This was despite being a British himself. What should we expect to be done to outsider?
So, Air Peace needs all our support to be able to weather any storm that will surely come from all these international airlines and their local conspirators (saboteurs), and also to expand to many other international routes where foreign airlines are simply robbing Nigerian travellers. The FG must fight to enforce our indigenous airlines’ rights in various BASA with different countries. Reciprocity should be the word. Air Peace management must also continue to raise the bar in the quality of their services, beyond crashing prices. They must make us all proud. We can only wish them well.
May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
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April 6, 2024.
