Nigeria Airways was established in August, 1958, under the name, West African Airways Corporation Nigeria Limited, following the closure of West African Airways Corporation. It began operations on October 1, 1958, in partnership with foreign partners, and in April, 1960, had a fleet comprising one Dove, eight Herons and eight DC-3s, flying to domestic routes and to destinations in Africa, Europe and South America and Asia. In 1961, it became Nigeria’s flag carrier when the Federal Government became the only owner of the company after buying the shares held by the investors, BOAC and Elder Dempster.
As of 1970, the staff strength stood at 2,191, but later grew to over 4,000 across different parts of the country as a well as in London, UK; New York, US; and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The company was later rebranded as Nigeria Airways on January 22, 1971, using aircraft leasing from industry players like Laker Airways, Ethiopian Airlines and Aer Lingus. To make the airline efficient and profitable, a contract was signed with KLM in September 1979, for a period of two years to train Nigeria Airways’ employees in airline management. But from the 1980s, the fortunes of the once competitive airline began to wane, owing to military incursion, mismanagement, corruption and bad debts, until it ceased operation in 2003.
Group Captain John Ojikutu is an aviation security consultant and a former military airport commandant during the reign of the Nigeria Airways at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos. He tells ALEXANDER OKERE about the heyday of the defunct airline and the factors that led to its extinction
What was it like having Nigeria Airways as a national carrier in the early 80s?
Nigeria Airways competed effectively with most of the airlines at that time. You can imagine Nigeria Airways in the midst of about 20 other airlines, like British Airways, which is still in operation; there was Pan Am (Pan American World Airways), Alitalia, Lufthansa and others from Europe. There were also others from Asia and Africa. Nigeria Airways flew along with all of them. Although we had private airlines in Nigeria flying domestic routes, it was only Nigeria Airways that flew international routes. It flew to London every day and to New York two times in a week. Locally, it went to Ibadan, Sokoto, Yola, Maiduguri, and Jos. It didn’t have a problem.
Would you say the country was ripe enough to manage its own airline at that time or the government acted in a hurry without a well-thought out plan?
No. But the unfortunate thing is that the Nigerian character in us was what killed Nigeria Airways. Nigeria Airways was the national carrier until the mid-90s when it became a government carrier. There is a difference between the two descriptions, and if you are not careful with the one (new national carrier) we want to set up now, we may end up setting up another government airline or carrier, instead of a national carrier. The liberalisation of private airlines was the beginning of the death of Nigeria Airways. We had a number of private airlines; we had Kabo Air, Okada Air, ADC Airline and Bellview Airline and they came up during the military era. The military took over Nigeria Airways as if it was a government carrier. Nigeria Airways used to be a contemporary of Ethiopian Airlines in Africa.
Did it have adequate aircraft, manpower and funding needed to run a standard airline?
Nigeria Airways had at least 30 aircraft. At a time, it was flying the Boeing 737 aircraft to Kano to drop passengers that would be moved to Sokoto, Kaduna and Jos with another aircraft because their runways could not take the 737 aircraft. These are things I know because I worked in Kano for about five years. It was the military incursion that killed Nigeria Airways.
How would you describe that kind of attention Nigeria Airways received from the Nigerian Government in terms of funding?
The attention Nigeria Airways got was the attention of it being used like a department of the Ministry of Transport. So, the government posted people to Nigeria Airways and those people did the job of civil servants in a ministry, rather than look into the commercial development of the airline. As a national carrier, if there is a war between one nation and another, the national carrier is a national asset to the government.
For instance, during the war between the British Government and Argentina on Falkland Islands, British Airways was used to move troops from Britain to Falkland Islands to fight the Argentinians. But when we needed to do that during the operations of ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) in Sierra Leone and Liberia, we decided to use private airlines. There was virtually no private airline that was not involved – Okada Air, Kabo Air, Triax Airlines were involved. These were private airlines that the government paid and never owed a dime. Nigeria Airways was not involved in any of these for about three or four years.
Did the former national carrier prove to be a reliable source of national revenue for the Federal Government before the military era?
As a national carrier, it didn’t have the need to ask the government for money until the military incursion. There were reports published in national dailies about how some monies were mismanaged in Nigeria Airways. I think the reports will help airlines of today and the government to start thinking of how to set up a national carrier that will not be mismanaged. When people who never developed with the system are brought in to head an organisation, it is the beginning of the death of that organisation. When the military took over, military officers, about four of them, were brought it to head Nigeria Airways. It was during that period that Nigeria Airways started going down. When (Chief Olusegun) Obasanjo left as a military head of state, Nigeria Airways had about 22 aircraft. But when he returned as a civilian president, he met only two aircraft. That was the annoyance that contributed to the liquidation of the airline.
What were the obvious signs that corruption and mismanagement had crept into the operation of the airline?
I know there was a time Nigeria Airways was given $60m around 1993. When the issue about the setting up of Air Nigeria started, the money was approved as capital to start it. But that money disappeared and the airline was never formed. The only visible thing I can tell you I saw was the painting of the Boeing 737 and the only DC-10 they had; they were painted with a different colour and inscribed with Air Nigeria on them. After that, nothing happened. The money disappeared. The seats of the aircraft were changed. All these were in the report about how monies were mismanaged. There was a lot of mismanagement, like taking aircraft abroad for maintenance or repair and not being able to pay. Last year, I heard one of the aircraft that had been there for over 20 years was sold at a ridiculous price.
A lot of times the aircraft were used to carry footballers and government officials free of charge. One of them I saw personally was when some governors’ wives were supposed to follow the wife of the President to Budapest, Hungary, and they were given economy class tickets. One of the women happened to be the wife of one of my bosses. She wanted to change her ticket from economy class to first class. They were told that the seats for such tickets had been fully booked. She later asked for business class and it took me almost two days to get a business class ticket for her. But every one of them was later given first class or business class tickets. There were other passengers who needed to buy the first class tickets but couldn’t get them. So, that was the way things were managed. People in government used Nigeria Airways as a government airline, not as a national carrier that was supposed to make money for the government; it was like an extension in a department in the Ministry of Transport that required funding, rather than generating revenue for the government.
Can you tell me more about aircraft leasing which was the major arrangement adopted by the government for the operation of the defunct airline?
There were the wet lease and dry lease. In the dry lease, the government picked aircraft from the leaser and provided a pilot. But in the wet lease, a pilot and crew members were provided in addition to the aircraft. The prices were different; payment could be done for every hour in one month or quarterly. The Nigerian government bought the ones it could buy and leased some. I think there was a time a Boeing 747 was bought on lease but when things weren’t moving fine, the aircraft was returned. During the time of Nigeria Airways, not many aircraft were leased. Out of the fleet, I don’t think the number of aircraft leased were up to four. The only problem it had was the mismanagement of funds.
What was the former airline’s level of aviation safety, did it record any air crash?
Nigeria Airways didn’t have too many crashes, apart from some incidents I witnessed. There was a collision in Enugu in 1983. It was fatal. Also, the Boeing 737 crash-landed in Lagos when I was a military airport commandant but every occupant came out alive. With the number of aircraft it had at that time, Nigeria Airways didn’t do badly because it had a very good standard until the military came. Things were better in terms of training and maintenance. Nigeria Airways had more flights than most of the airlines in operation in Nigeria today. It flew aircraft at least once every day to the 10 airports Nigeria had at that time.
It was also reported that, as of the time of its closure, the airline had huge debts totalling $528m (equivalent to $719,123,010 in 2018). How did it get to that stage?
The debts didn’t result from the leasing of aircraft but the accumulation of so many things. They included maintenance; aircraft were carried out for maintenance without money to pay for the services. There was a time when Nigeria owed service providers for the check-in counter allocated to it in New York; there were times Nigeria Airways landed in London but was held back for certain amounts of money to be paid before clearance was given. So, little payments like that was part of the debts it owed. Nigeria owed some of the airports in London and New York money for landing and packing. All these accounted for the debts owed by the former national carrier. That is why I say if we must set up a national carrier, it must not have government control; the government must not have shares of more than 10 per cent, and I’m happy the present Minister of Aviation (Hadi Sirika) said five percent, which is okay. The remaining one (five per cent) can be given to Nigerians. We can’t afford a single-ownership airline because we can’t compete with foreign airlines on international routes.
Do you think those debts have been cleared
The debts were not cleared. That was why most of the aircraft were sold. One, a Boeing 737, was sold last year for less than half a million dollars and there were so many of them like that. Many of them had been sold much earlier – some of them that were taken for maintenance never returned. Nobody asked about those that were left in the hangar.
Were they sold too?
Even if they were sold, who sold them and where is the money? That is the type of character we have. There are so many questions to ask in the industry, especially when it involves government money.
Was it true that the airline was overstaffed with as much as 8,500 employees, contributing to its eventual liquidation?
I am not sure about that figure but I think they (workers) were about 4,000. Nigeria Airways was run like a government agency and like any government agency, it was overstaffed and the majority of them were doing practically nothing. There were Nigeria Airways workers in Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Ilorin, Kano, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Calabar, Yola, Maiduguri and Sokoto. But they were more in Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt. There were also employees in London, New York and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
But there were also reports that the downsizing of staff, as ordered by the Federal Government, and the reduction or discontinuation of flights on unprofitable routes, all as cost-cutting measures, contributed to the demise of the airline. Do you agree with that?
I think some of them were sacked on disciplinary grounds and they include the four or five pilots who left to form ADC Airlines. I remember that two of the aircraft shuttling passengers were sold and not many people agreed with the sale of those aircraft. I wasn’t with Nigeria Airways at that time. But from outside, I didn’t think those who sold those aircraft did a reasonable thing.
Why?
Those aircraft flew twice a day to drop passengers in Sokoto, Kaduna and Jos, and back. But when they were sold, the pilots and other crew members became idle. For something like that to have been done, of course, the workforce would have been downsized.
International Air Transport Association suspended Nigeria Airways in early 1987 from the clearing house for accumulated debts of $1.1m. Did the Federal Government do enough to get the suspension lifted?
How many of our airlines have been members of IATA since that time? Being an IATA member is like being in an alliance. That means that if an airline is supposed to fly to London with an aircraft but for whatever reason it can’t, the passengers could be moved to another aircraft based on an arrangement by IATA which would in turn pay the affected airline. That arrangement still exists and that is why you see airlines going into an alliance today. But in the case of Nigeria Airways, I think it got to a stage that instead of staying with IATA and allowing its money to go there, the management sold the flight tickets and collected the money. So, the debt was there with IATA and that was why it expelled Nigeria Airways. Nigeria owes IATA ticket money. If it wants to be readmitted, it has to pay a lot of money.
What made the airline to stop flying foreign routes?
Nigeria Airways owed money virtually everywhere. It was as bad as that. It was the same political interference that affected many national carriers in Africa.
The Federal Government finally liquidated the airline in 2003. Do you think that decision was the best at that time?
I don’t think so. Running Nigeria Airways like a national carrier was what I thought was missing in the thinking of those that liquidated the airline. They should have called experts to look at the report on the management of the airline and see what they could do to revive the airline without receiving a kobo from the government. But the government later went with Virgin Nigeria, though it could have used that method and made Virgin Nigeria a national carrier.
But nobody knows what went underground in the establishment of that airline (Virgin Nigeria). Till date, I cannot tell you who owned Virgin Nigeria, apart from the man who owns Virgin Atlantic. There were Nigerians who had money in Virgin Nigeria but used the government and wanted the government do to virtually everything for them. It is the same way private airlines are looking up to the government to do certain things for them, using our commonwealth to set up an airline for themselves. If you are going to use our commonwealth, then you must go to the stock exchange and sell shares for Nigerians to buy. So, it (liquidation of Nigeria Airways) was done in a hurry without good advice. When the government set up a board of enquiry and got the report, it could have recovered the airline’s money from those who stole the money and put it back into the purse of Nigeria Airways to continue with foreign technical partners.
How would you assess how successive governments have handled the payment of the entitlements of former employees of the airline, especially as some have yet to receive their full benefits since they were laid off more than 10 years ago?
Some of them haven’t been paid fully, though they have collected some percentages of their money. The government is paying them from other sources. But if it had been able to recover the money the board of enquiry found in the hands of some people, these problems would have been solved long ago. However, there are a lot of pensioners of government agencies, like the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited and the National Shipping Line, that have also not been paid.
There have been attempts by the Federal Government to float a new national carrier. Do you think it’s a project that could end up like the defunct Nigeria Airways if corruption and nepotism creep in, considering the involvement of politicians?
The only option we have is to have a national carrier not owned by the government. Corruption will creep into it, if it is owned by the government. That could be one of the reasons we are having this delay because we should have been able to form a national carrier between 2018 and 2019, if we had gone about it the way some of us thought. The government should bring in foreign technical partners, not airlines operating here. It could go to the US, Europe, Australian or Canada and look for airlines that don’t have any business operation in our environment but are looking for how to develop too. We could sit down with them and with Nigerian investors and experts to come up with a national carrier.
What other factor could be responsible for the delay in launching a new national carrier?
The government has been battling to identify a foreign technical partner. We have heard about Ethiopian Airlines, Emirates Airlines, and so many of them.
How can Nigeria relaunch itself into the international aviation sector, with a formidable national airline?
It should bring in a foreign technical partner with good experience that will invest up to 40 per cent, but not a technical partner among its competitors. It can bring another 40 per cent investment from Nigeria. The Federal Government can take five per cent. The only thing I will say is that we should leverage the opportunity created by the location of this country in Africa.
Punch
