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Chairman, House Committee on Aviation, Nnolim Nnaji, has pledged to partner with the Senate and other relevant agencies to review the country’s Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASAs in Favour of Nigerian airlines.
Nnaji made this known during his post inaugural address to the House recently. He said it as important the country reviewed policies that tend to hinder the growth of domestic carriers, while empowering the dominance of international carriers in the nation’s airspace.
He said: “Nigeria’s aviation industry has great potential, which have over the years have been unduly exploited by foreign airlines. Several foreign carriers operate multiple flights out of Nigeria daily (morning and night), charging very exorbitant fares without any indigenous operator reciprocating same.
“Findings have also shown that some Nigerian travellers now have to go through the neighbouring West African countries to connect flights to Europe and America because fares are cheaper over there. These no doubt promote capital flights, unemployment and negatively impact on the economic growth of the nation, which should not be tolerated,” Nnaji noted.
He said House in partnership with the Senate would move for the review of Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) Nigeria signed with various countries to address the increasing dominance of the aviation industry by foreign airlines so that “our indigenous carriers can be protected from early collapse.”
“Permit me also to emphasise that the protracted second Abuja Airport runway is now overdue for actualisation because of the strategic importance of the airport as the gateway to the nation’s capital and seat of government.
“It is pertinent to point out that in the event that we witness an accident on the runway; the airport will be shut down to traffic, until accident investigators are done with their preliminary investigations. We shouldn’t wait for that to happen before we do the right thing. We will engage the Federal Ministry of Aviation and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to bring this to fruition,” the lawmaker observed.
