The House of Representatives yesterday mandated its Committee on Aviation to summon a former Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika for a briefing on the status of the Air Nigeria project.
He is to brief the committee on the project – from the point he handed it over and provide insights into a wide range of controversies and allegations surrounding the project.
The House also invited Aviation and Aerospace Development Minister Festus Keyamo to brief the committee on the national carrier project.
Also invited are the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), to brief the committee on the Air Nigeria project and its certifications, as applied to the national carrier.
The House also invited the eight local airlines and their associations to enable the Green Chamber have a full overview of the project.
The committee is also to carry out a forensic audit of the process of Air Nigeria and report back within four weeks for further legislative action.
The House urged the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the ministries of Budget, National Planning and Finance to furnish it with requisite data and financial resources on the project.
These resolutions followed the adoption of a motion, titled: Need to Investigate the National Air Carrier Project, moved by Tarkighir Dickson.
The House recalled that in 2016, Sirika proposed an aviation roadmap with a national carrier as the signature project to deliver it to Nigerians by the end of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
It said the former minister approached Ethiopian Airlines a few days before the handover to provide an aircraft that could be made available to Nigerians as an aircraft belonging to Air Nigeria while the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had issued an Air Transport Licence to Air Nigeria as the name for the proposed national carrier.
The House said it was aware that the last administration spent billions of naira, ostensibly to acquire a new national carrier but the status of the project remained unclear, regardless of the billions of taxpayers’ funds utilised on the project.
