Foreign firm duped Air Peace of $2m, says CEO Onyema
The Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, has narrated how his company suffered a $2m loss to a Tunisia-based leasing company.
Onyema revealed this experience while speaking at the 29th annual conference of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents on Thursday in Lagos.
The airline boss said that when this happened, he refused to pursue the case because at the time, Nigeria was blacklisted for breach of contract.
He said, “A foreign company defrauded us of $2 million. They told us they wanted to buy aircraft parts and needed a sum of $2 million.
“If I had stopped them from taking the money, Nigeria would have been further blacklisted. What you would be hearing is that Nigerian airlines are unreliable.
“For the sake of the aviation industry, I decided not to stop this transaction. The company took our money and never came back. They stole our $2 million.
“The Nigerian government got in touch with them. They said it was a private business matter and they would see what they could do, and they ran away with that $2 million.”
He said his decision not to pursue legal action was influenced by Nigeria’s unofficial blacklisting at the time due to previous breaches of aircraft lease agreements by some local airlines.
“I’m not going to go into that because it’s not totally the fault of those airlines either.
“You need to understand why they went to court. So you have to be careful to protect your country. You have to protect your flag. That was a sacrifice that we made for the good of other airlines in this country.
“If we had seized that money, we wouldn’t have been able to access dry-lease opportunities, because it would have further compounded the problems of the aviation industry,” he said.
He also highlighted the challenges of funding in the aviation sector, stating that banks in Nigeria are becoming more reluctant to lend due to issues of non-repayment and a lack of integrity.
“In Nigeria, funding is very expensive with a 35 per cent interest rate and it’s not even available to everybody. People are asked to also bring collateral that is almost impossible to get. We need the banks but the conditions being imposed are very far from being helpful.
“The Nigerian aviation sector has started being a little bit more liberal, but you need to earn it,” he added.
Onyema appealed to the government to create a window for the airlines to access foreign exchange through the Central Bank of Nigeria or the Bank of Industry.
“Egypt has done it. Some other countries have done it. The good thing this government has done for us is that it has made foreign exchange rates stable. You can plan now, which is a good thing for the aviation sector.
“However, at the Central Bank level, they can create a window for airlines to acquire dollars at a slightly cheaper rate, because we are operating from a disadvantaged position when we operate from Nigeria,” he said.
