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To the amiable business mogul and socialite, Kunle Soname, anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well. As a sports mogul and founder of Bet9ja, Nigeria’s number one online bookmaker company, Soname shattered the myth that sports cannot be run successfully as a business venture here in Nigeria or in most African countries.
His Bet9ja brand has been a phenomenal success to the extent it picked the bill as principal sponsor of the Big Brother Naija Season 4 in 2019. A year before, Soname had quietly shifted his gaze to the aviation sector with plans to bring his midas touch to that lucrative but highly delicate sector when he floated his airline, JetValue, to provide premium and high quality flight services in Nigeria and Africa.
And he started by creating top-of-mind awareness for his brand with sponsorship of some international sporting events. That was just as his ValueJet skeletally operated two Bombardier CRJ 900 aircraft that seat up to 90 passengers in economy. As part of the process to commence regional flights this week, ValueJet completed all necessary demo flights and has now been issued the Air Operator Certificate which enables it to conduct certain commercial air transport operations.
With an identified niche in the sector and the need for fair pricing, ValueJet, penultimate week, officially became Nigeria’s newest domestic airline as it made its first flights out of Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. This inaugural flight came nearly six months after it received receipt of a fleet of aircraft, some of which were newly purchased —CRJ-900s with the registration, 5N-BXS, and 5N-BXT.
