The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, said a recent statement by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), reprimanding Air Peace on its services and exorbitant fares was a careless move.
Mr. Keyamo who was speaking to Arise TV Sunday said the FCCPC shouldn’t have gone public with it finding. But rather should have contacted the regulatory agency.
“I think it was a very careless statement – I say that with all apology – by the agency, making such a statement without consulting the core agency involved in regulation, which is the NCAA. The power to regulate these airlines and for the airlines to inform about their price increase and all of that is domiciled in NCAA; that is the core agency.
“They should have contacted the NCAA for them to look at the books, which we have been doing, so we would have given them facts. But to single out a few airlines that we are struggling to expose to the world for them to get more enhanced capacity, it was a bit careless,” he stated.
Keyamo added that the challenges facing the aviation industry include capacity limitations, especially regarding aircraft acquisition, servicing routes forex fluctuation, and not exploitation.
He said, “What we are facing is a problem of capacity of the airlines to acquire aircraft and to service their routes. Again, we have things that are totally out of our control, which is the issue of the fluctuation of the forex, the exchange rate, that affects everything in aviation. Everything in aviation is dollar based.”
The Minister stated that the challenges of foreign exchange affect the operation costs of Nigerian airlines and the government is actively working towards addressing the issues.
“All of these are foreign exchange, and with the fluctuating nature of our naira against the dollar, you will expect that it will affect also their cost of operation. Now, what we are therefore doing is to ensure that we expose them to the markets across the world where they can now access aircraft on very good terms, and this will impact on the prices of tickets and their cost of operation.”
“I’m in a very delicate position because I’m also here to protect Nigerians. I’m also here to protect the travellers and to ensure that they also get tickets at a very good rate. And that is what I have also addressed in terms of what we are eventually doing to address the problems and the concerns of Nigerians.”
