LAGOS — AVIATION Minister, Mallam Isa Yuguda, and Special Adviser to the president on aviation, Capt. Usman Iyal, are currently on collision course over the nation’s inability to start-off a national carrier more than a year after the federal government embarked on the process, which has since collapsed.
The disagreement between the two key aviation figures in the country is said to have already drawn the attention of President Olusegun Obasanjo and the entire Federal Executive Council (FEC).
A source told Vanguard that the collapse of the involvement of South African Airways as strategic investor and technical partner in the proposed Nigerian Eagle Airlines is said to have heightened the differences between the minister and special adviser.
While the minister, Mallam Yuguda, canvassed the choice of the SAA in the Eagle Airlines’ project, Capt. Iyal favoured the option of a completely private and independent carrier in Nigerian Global Aviation Company Limited, and this the source added, is the cause of the no love lost between the two figures.
Iyal was said to have favoured a private and independent flag carrier, as it corresponded with the President’s philosophy of not committing a kobo of the nation’s money into the venture.
The source said the minister had even owned up to his inability to provide the nation with a new carrier, in the absence of liquidated Nigerian Airways, within one year as earlier promised, but that he had been caught between allowing the special adviser to take the credit for his (special adviser) earlier vision of a failed project, with the SAA as strategic investor and technical partner.
“The Federal Executive Council is impatient that another summer is fast approaching without a Nigerian carrier to challenge the foreign airlines, especially on such viable routes as London, Jeddah, Dubai and New York,” said the source.
Government is said to be particularly concerned about the capital flight the absence of a Nigerian flag carrier had continued to cost the country. The minister only recently said the nation was losing an average of $2 billion annually to capital flight through the aviation sector, but the source noted the minister’s estimate as an under-statement.
