Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN) has dropped a bombshell.

He said: “It was never Air Nigeria. It was Ethiopian trying to flag our flag and not Air Nigeria. That is the truth; it was not Nigeria.”

“It only printed Air Nigeria. It was an Ethiopian airline trying to fly our flag. If it is so, why not allow our local people to fly our flag? Why bring a foreigner to fly our flag?”

“So nobody should deceive you that it is Air Nigeria. Air Nigeria must be indigenous, wholly Nigeria or must be for the full benefit of Nigerians. Not that 60 percent of the profit is given to another country.”

“How does that benefit us? It remains suspended. It remains so.”

“We have agreed that we’re going to resume cargo flights between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.”

“This has been suspended for a long time but now cargo flights are back. Guess what? Air cargo trade accounts for 35 percent of the world trade deficit.”

“And air cargo trade, according to the International Air Transport Association, IATA, attracts about $6 trillion annually.”

“And we’re missing you know. Within that sector, we were missing in many routes around the world and we have achieved that.”

“We all know this issue was the issue of trapped funds of the international airlines. Their funds were trapped here because of a lack of liquidity on the part of Nigeria because of so many subsidies we pay with our foreign earnings.”

“Also, foreign airlines were threatening to stop operating in Nigeria. Now, I must give credit to all those in the financial sector for this. We had to work closely with the CBN and the Minister of Finance.”

“We had to work closely with all of the ministers in the financial sector. And by our persistence, we are happy to announce that we have cleared all the trapped funds.”