It is now ten months since former minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika took Nigerians on the adventure of the launch of a national carrier called Nigeria Air
The fanfare which costs the country several billions of Naira is
considered one of the most inexplicable cases of public waste embarked upon by the Buhari administration
Many demanded a probe and in June 2023, Hadi Sirika was invited by the EFCC. But since then, everything seems to have gone cold
ait.live chronicles the story behind the failed project and why all involved must be held accountable
It was Hadi Sirika’s project. A project that many critics including Airline Operators of Nigeria AON, said was unnecessary and a waste of public resources
Despite months of criticism, Sirika on the 26th of May 2023, three days before the end of the administration he served, brought in an Ethiopian Airlines owned aircraft that was repainted with the logo of Nigerian Air, created a spectacle of a static display at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport; and that was the end of the story
The expenditure on the project was such that would make one squeal, the lack of transparency was probably worse
It began with the logo design, where it was speculated that $660,000 was paid to a Bahrain based company to design it. Sirika denied the claim as false and misleading , but he never disclosed how much was actually spent
By the time the project was over, Sirika also claimed N3 Billion was spent. But most of the money went to consultants and those he famously called Technical Advisers who helped him packaged the proposed airline including its presentation at the farnbourgh air show in the United Kingdom in July 2018.
Others sources say what was spent was in the region of N85.42billion between 2016 and 2023.
When the borrowed Ethiopian aircraft was finally unveiled in Sirika’s Nigeria Air logo in May 2023, many Nigerians were taken aback, describing it as a ‘fraud’
Now this is where it got more puzzling. It was called Nigeria Air but Ethiopian Airlines was to have 49% ownership while the Federal Government of Nigeria held just 5% with the rest spread among other partners. Yet it was the Nigerian Government that put in all the money wasted on the project
The Group CEO of Ethiopian Airlines Mesfin Tasew, was quoted later as saying that it was never the initiative of Ethiopian Airlines to go with Nigerian Air and that it will be just fine if it was canceled
After President Bola Tinubu took over, the project was suspended and remains suspended. But there have been demands for a probe, as accountability questions mount over Hadi Sirika.
After a much publicized report of him being invited for questioning by the EFCC, nothing has been heard since.
Has Hadi Sirika gotten off the hook? ait.live learnt from a source that while investigation is still ongoing, influential persons have been trying to stall the case.
The source further told ait.live that the agency is bent on painstakingly gathering all the facts before taking the next steps
As part of the probe, Abubakar, a level 16 civil servant in the Federal Ministry of Water Resources was detained and is still under active investigating over an alleged N8.06bn aviation contract fraud executed under proxy
For now, Sirika who has yet to responded to our inquiry on the matter, has been keeping a low public profile, perhaps in hopes that the issue will fade away like the Nigeria Air
Editor Paul Akhagbemhe
