Former CEO: Nigerian Airways could have been salvaged

Former Nigeria Airways(NAL) CEO Major General Olu Bajowa has stated that the airline could have survived its financial troubles in the last decade due its robust assets and bilateral service agreements.


According to the former CEO, the airline was not dead as it was painted, which was the excuse used to liquidate and sold it. The former CEO added that NAL had tremendous human and material assets, locally, regionally and internationally that could have helped defray some of its debts, rather than the outright liquidation by the Obasanjo civilian administration.

The defunct Nigeria Airways

“NAL had assets in Europe, UK, America, African countries to offset the liability it purportedly acquired. The various routes its aircraft were flying as the national carrier and the Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) it entered into with other international airlines then were enough for its sustainability.

The huge resources from BASA and its annual subvention from the Ministry of Aviation then should have formed part of what could have bailed it out then or in the alternative entered into operations with mega airlines such s as the British airways or other international airlines, the former NAL CEO in the 1980s said, adding that the airline was the country’s pride.

Former Nigeria Airways Employees protest the liquidation of the airline 2003

Mr Bajowa was speaking at the launch of the book "Nigerian Civil Aviation: Decade of Security, Safety and Passenger Comfort Development" by Oba Olufemi Adewunmi Ogunleye, an event that was also attended by the former President under whose administration the Nigeria Airways was liquidated Mr Olusegun Obasanjo who contended that there was no way for the airline to have survived profitably as it was run by various boards of directors who were perennially corrupt. Obasanjo said NAL was a huge drain to government funds.

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