News
London flights: Air Peace cry of frustration *Airport officials asked plane to park ‘in the bush’ – Onyema
Allen Onyema, Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace Airlines, on Monday, recounted how elements within the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, are doing everything possible to frustrate the Nigeria-London-Nigeria flight operations, which commenced last weekend.
Narrating a tale of woes, which he said started more than seven years ago with several stumbling blocks deliberately put on the road to the operation, which eventually came to fruition on Saturday, March 30, the airline boss, spoke of how “wicked civil servants” tried to force the plane carrying passengers on the return flight from London to park at a disused terminal near the bush as one of the series of frustrations he had been forced to face in recent past.
A guest on The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise Television, Onyema, stated that it took the decision of the said Air Peace management to block planes from other airline operators from accessing their own packing lots for the said officials at the airport to finally budge and allocate the said plane the right terminal to park and disembark its passengers.
Though the airline boss did not name the said officials, or the particular arm of the airport administration they belonged, he said the incident on Sunday, was not the first time, adding that he had cause to report the first incident to the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), which took steps to resolve it only for a repeat on Easter Day.
Hear him: “Let me tell you what happened yesterday at the international airport when our own aircraft landed. Thank God I was there. This thing had happened before and we reported to FAAN. Let me excuse the leadership of FAAN here. Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku, is doing fantastically well, herself and Director of Air Operations, Captain Abdullahi Mahmoud – they’re pained, they’re pained in the wickedness of the system – civil servants – the wickedness in the system is stinking.
“Your only carrier doing international operations in Nigeria, would land and you keep us somewhere in the bush, disused side of the airport and you expect us to be forcing passengers, bringing rickety buses to take international passengers to the new terminal, where these foreign airlines rejected when they opened. It was Air Peace, because it was my country that decided to go in there. They begged Air Peace to do that. We went in there.
“When they did the runway, they wanted to do the runway analysis after the lighting, it was Air Peace Nigeria begged, they didn’t have money to fuel a triple seven. A triple seven consumes about 8,800 litres of fuel per hour. It was Air Peace they brought. We even told them, let’s use our smaller planes because of the cost, but they said no, it was a triple seven they would need. We did it free of charge.
“I don’t want to enumerate what we have done both for the government and people of this country. Now, in the new airport, they would park us two kilometres away from the terminal and you expect us to be doing bus whatever. That plane that landed yesterday, it would have taken about six hours for people to exit that airport.
“Because, first of all, they put us near NAHCO shed, very far. Nobody is using that end. No aircraft, not even foreign or local. That was where they asked my pilot to park. Meanwhile C-23 at the new terminal was open where you could just park the aircraft and avio-bridge will key in. And when my captain called, they said they reserved it for a foreign airline at the expense of a Nigerian airline.
“They did it before. One of my captains, Captain Callistus Ifeanyi, disobeyed them and they wanted to punish him and I came out and Olubunmi Kuku and the management criticised that in fairness to her. They criticised that. Now, it happened again yesterday.
Our aircraft from London, was to be parked in one bush, two kilometres to the terminal and with full flight. So, imagine the time it would take to take people from that place to the terminal building. Imagine the time it would take to offload. It would have taken about nine hours. Nigerians would have hated Air Peace, because they won’t know. That was the game.
“So, you’re contending not with external conspiracies, but with internal conspiracies withing Nigeria. Some Nigerians are praying we fail. Well, the good thing is that nobody is God. The good thing is that 90 per cent of our country’s men and women are happy. That’s our consolation. But there are people out there, but they’re in the minority, so negligible and I don’t even bother with them, because they cannot scratch Air Peace – whatever they write, whatever they do, cannot scratch Air Peace Airlines.
“Well it happened yesterday and when the woman discovered this, she was livid with rage. I mean the MD of FAAN. But look at what I did. I called my Operations Control Centre who could reach the pilot, because I couldn’t connect with my pilot, I called my OCC, and told them, tell that pilot not to move that aircraft, block that taxiway. No airline in the world would have been able to park yesterday. British Airways landed and that was when they started making moves to tell us to where we rightly belonged.
“Remember, this woman had said on television earlier that a place had been dedicated to Air Peace as the home airline. When you go to Britain, you have the entire Terminal 5 for BA. But in my own country, some civil servants or some people didn’t see it. And the DG of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), was on board my aircraft. About four senior staff of NCAA were on board that aircraft.
“He had to go in because they had delayed the flight for about 30 minutes, standing in one place for 30 minutes. What kind of country is this? So, when the DG who was on board contacted the captain to know what was happening – I think he went into the cockpit and the people in the cockpit contacted the people in the tower – the airport control people and the captain told them that even the DG of NCAA was inside the aircraft, the guy said ‘so what?’
“That will show you some peoples determination not to see beyond their noses. But that wickedness will not last. One thing is that anybody that is fighting me or fighting anything that I’m interested in will have himself burnt and will regret at the end of the day.”
Fuel marketers across Abuja on Wednesday continued to sell Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol, at old prices more than 24 hours after Dangote Petroleum Refinery announced a reduction in its ex-depot price, Vanguard is reporting.
The paper reported that its investigation, showed that major retail outlets were yet to adjust their pump prices despite the N75 per litre reduction announced by the refinery on Monday.
At the retail stations visited in Abuja, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Retail and TotalEnergies dispensed petrol at N1,335 per litre, while AA Rano sold at N1,350 per litre. AYM Shafa and Conoil outlets sold the product at N1,330 per litre.
The development comes amid growing public expectations that the reduction in Dangote Refinery’s gantry price would quickly translate into lower pump prices nationwide.
Explaining the delay, the President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Dr. Billy Gillis-Harry, said retail prices are influenced by several factors beyond refinery gate prices.
Speaking to Channels TV, Gillis-Harry said: “Prices reflecting at the pump are dependent on availability of the product, the other is the cost. The cost of purchasing the product and cost in terms of logistics, and preparing the particular petroleum to be delivered to the people”.
According to him, downward price adjustments often take longer to reach consumers because marketers need to recover the cost of existing stock purchased at higher prices before restocking at lower rates.
When asked why increases in fuel prices are usually reflected immediately while reductions are delayed, Gillis-Harry said the dynamics of supply management play a significant role.
He explained: “It is mainly affected by whether the producer has additional resources or not at the time. Increases in prices are mainly caused by the need to restock. There must be that advantage pushing the price upward to be able to pay for new supplies.”
He further acknowledged that marketers generally seek to exhaust existing inventory before implementing lower prices.
“That’s the basic idea. But in petroleum, a mixture is involved, and loss is taken, though not in a way that affects the capital needed to restock,” he added.
Also speaking on the issue, energy analyst Olabode Sowunmi said fuel pricing in Nigeria is influenced by a combination of domestic supply arrangements and logistics costs, rather than crude oil prices alone.
He noted that although international crude oil prices remain an important factor globally, their impact on local petrol pricing is not always direct.
“Global price of crude oil is a factor internationally and not necessarily in Nigeria,” Sowunmi said.
Explaining that Dangote Refinery operates under arrangements that allow a portion of crude supply to be priced in naira, reducing the direct impact of international market fluctuations on local fuel prices, he said: “So basically the issue will have to be from the point of refinery to where it touches the final person. Logistics costs within the domestic supply chain remain a major determinant of the final pump price paid by consumers.”
Peter Obi, candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has given assignment to Nigerians to put all those aspiring to take up political positions in the country through the grill to ascertain their level of integrity, saying it was required as a sine qua non for the job they seek.
Obi, who has been a subject of discussion in the polity since the allegation of corruption was levied against him by Kenneth Okonkwo, spokesman of his campaign in 2023, over the conduct of the party’s primaries to choose candidates for the 2027 general elections, said the grilling must start with his own person.
A guest in an interview on a podcast with Rufai Oseni, a popular television anchor, the former Governor of Anambra State, stated that it was actually for this reason that he had now sworn to see the litigation he instituted against Okonkwo through.
His take is that the Nollywood actor should use the courtrooms to give all the details of bad behaviour, following his threat to expose him fully, after alleging that he was collecting money from aspirants in the said election for electoral favours.
Hear him: “The issue of taking Kenneth Okonkwo to court wouldn’t have arisen if he had stopped at those allegations. But he claimed he still has more he would expose about me in the future. So, I am very happy to take him to court so that he can expose me publicly, alongside other Nigerians. If any of them has any criminal allegations against me, they should bring them to court.
“Not just Kenneth, everybody should now say those things they know that is bad about me or I did that is wrong because it’s good for the system, it’s good for the society,” Obi said.
“So, if you know that when we were in primary school, this man was cheating or didn’t go to the primary school, didn’t go to secondary school, didn’t do, if you know this man has done something criminal somewhere, this is time to bring it up.”
For the umpteenth time, Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned about the dangerous implication of using state institutions, particularly the judiciary to destroy Nigeria’s democracy, saying it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.
Atiku, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), speaking on the heels of Tuesday’s verdict of the Court of Appeal, halting the de-registration order by the Federal High Court, insisted that judicial officers must not lend themselves to any act capable of undermining the nation’s democratic process.
The appellate court had ordered a stay of execution on the order made on Monday by Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court Abuja, for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister the ADC alongside four other political parties).
A totally scandalised Court of Appeal, sitting in Abuja, had taken umbrage, sparing no hard words in upbraiding the lower court judge, stating that his likes were unfit to sit on the bench.
In a unanimous ruling by a three-man panel, the court held that Lifu’s action was “the highest form of judicial impertinence”, stressing that the Supreme Court previously held that a judge who acted in such a manner.
Describing his conduct as the height of judicial rascality, the upper court, stated: “Courts are enjoined to protect their integrity. This Court has supervisory authority over the trial court.
“The decision of the lower court to proceed with the judgment despite the express order of this court is a brazen violation of the hierarchy of the court and the 1999 Constitution.
This court has the duty to invoke its powers in ensuring that its orders are obeyed. The application for a stay of execution is here yet granted. The enforcement of the judgment is stayed.”
Atiku, who hailed the position of the higher court, which restored his hope to be on the ballot as presidential candidate in the 2027 election, also noted the role of INEC as “significant.”
He said: “I welcome the Court of Appeal’s decision to stay the execution of the Federal High Court judgement seeking the deregistration of our great party, the ADC, and four other political parties. It is particularly significant that INEC itself initiated the application for the stay.
“The development reflects growing public concern over judicial contradictions and politically charged rulings within the judiciary. “Any attempt to undermine Nigeria’s hard-won democracy through judicial manipulation is a grave danger to the Republic. If our democracy suffers further injury, history will demand accountability from those entrusted with dispensing justice.
Outside ADC, Lifu’s order, also included: Action Democratic Congress (ADC), Action Peoples Party (APP), Action Alliance (AA), Accord Party (AP) and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), similarly slammed for allegedly failing to meet the constitutional requirements for continued registration and participation in elections.
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