“When we bought over Air Nigeria we met a $150 million loan on ground. So when the CBN bought over the loan, how does that come to us? That was an account to account clearance yet people were mentioning Jimoh Ibrahim all over the place. When I appeared before the Senate Committee I made that clear and the Senate Committee saw my point and the Chairman of the committee stated it that the fund was a bank to bank transaction with no cash ever getting to us. I believe my submission at the Senate has cleared the air on that and that matter has been laid to rest.
It does not affect my reputation in any way that a company that I have interests in owes a bank. Assuming that my company owes a bank, which company doesn’t owe in its entire life span? Companies owe, that’s allowed in businesses.
Owing is different from owing and refusing to repay. It doesn’t matter; it only becomes an issue if the company collapses.
You can only declare the company bankrupt not the directors of the company. What we must not fail to realise is that there is a separate personality between the company that owes and the owners of the company. The fact that I represent a company is not a guarantee that the company is going to live forever, a company can die and it does not mean that because a company died due to bankruptcy.
The owners could decide to wind down the company if they realise that they can no longer run the company. Did government not wound down some of its companies when they realised that they cannot run it and the company was moribund and eating deep into the national pocket? You cannot give guarantee that a company won’t die.
Didn’t Merrill Lynch die? Even British Airways, Goldman Sachs, all had their problems. Every company is bound to have their problem at one point or the other but what you have in Nigeria is that you can hardly separate a company from the owners of the company. So what does my reputation got to do with that? Does it mean that I cannot attain any position that I aspire to attain?
When Richard Branson ran the company, he left a huge debt with UBA; does it mean that Richard Branson doesn’t have a reputation again? He left the airline with two aircraft parked at the tarmac and walked out all his management staff. Have you forgotten the state at which I bought the airline? It was actually at a stage of being wound up by Guaranty Trust Bank because the management of the company owed the bank some money. The case was adjourned for judgment when I bought over the airline. If a company is set up and its asset is in trillion, and, assuming the company owes a bank N50 billion what is the proportion of that debt to your asset? 0.1 per cent; is that what you call debt. If as a business man you do not have any liability at any point in time then you’re a thief.”
It was about how to rescue the country from certain misnomers. It is absurd that a country of 180 million people is without a national airline. I was a young man, in my early 40s and I saw a foreigner who came into the country and tried to provide us with a National carrier, he was celebrated when he came here during the President Obasanjo’s administration; the man tried his best but when he realised that the Nigerian problem would not allow him to run the company profitably he decided to leave and at the time he was leaving the airline was owing so much, about a quarter of a billion dollar, that’s a lot of money. But you cannot blame him, he has done his best but the system would not allow him to work.
I bought it over because I thought if the system did not allow it to work for him, may be Jimoh Ibrahim who is a Nigerian would be able to walk around those factors, so I took over. I didn’t see anything bad in what Richard Branson did.
Even though the airline owed $250 million at the time, don’t forget that Richard Branson developed the West African route and people were able to fly with affordable tickets. Lagos to London was also opened and we were able to compete with British Airways but when Nigerians won’t allow it to work, then I took over. I cannot continue to use his brand so I had to change the name, yet I didn’t change the name to Jimoh Airline which I could have done; I changed it to Air Nigeria. I did all asset debentures to our group to be able to run the airline then we grew it from 2 planes to about 12 planes.
What killed the airline is the same Nigerian factor. One fateful day I flew the airline and saw that the flight was fully booked, I flew back to Nigeria the same day and the whole seats were fully booked, by the time we got back to Lagos, when I asked for the revenue, it was nowhere to be found. In my bid to find out what was happening by myself, I went to London, when I opened the drawer of the accountant in London I found bundles of tickets there, then I took one bundle and brought it with me to Lagos, days after my accountant didn’t report any missing ticket. Two weeks after I summoned him to Lagos and I said to him, see the tickets that I took from your office drawer. They were printing tickets and selling and keeping the money for themselves. When I realised that they were working against making it a successful business I decided to shut it down.
We went to Egypt Air and leased an aircraft, we paid $3.5 million initial deposits and we were paying $1.5 million every month for the rental lease; we also accommodated all the pilots in Sheraton Hotel because the owners of the aircraft wouldn’t allow any other pilot other than their’s to fly the aircraft. We agreed to all of that yet the people running the airline were printing tickets and selling it for N40,000 and N50, 000; even as a member of IATA, the ticketing wasn’t going into the system. Then what do I do? Do I stop somebody who has a ticket from boarding? Yet we weren’t seeing the money, do I continue with that kind of business?
At one time, staff members came to me and said they wanted to go on strike for unpaid salary of month of May, they came on a day that I wanted to travel to get an additional aircraft on lease and I told them how could you be talking of going on strike for the salary of May when it is just 23rd of May; when May has not ended. I told them somebody was using them and asked them to go ahead with the strike. They went on strike and later called it off and when they resumed, the regulators came over to say they wanted to inspect our aircraft because we didn’t fly for two or three days.
They said they want to inspect our fleet and I said to them that this is an unusual inspection, because we didn’t fly for two or three days you want to inspect the entire fleet and Captain Demuren told me to go and talk to the minister of aviation. I told him that I cannot go and talk to any minister if I won’t be allowed to run the airline as I should be running it.
What kind of check could you have put in place that Nigerians won’t abuse?
That was the best way because of safety. If people are corrupt within an airline they can compromise safety and if they compromised safety an aircraft could crash, if it crashed people will die and they will mention my name that I am the owner of the aircraft; I probably will not be able to come out of that stigma. Imagine going along the road and somebody points to you and say ‘his airline killed my father.’ It could even kill the entire group.”
– Culled from THISDAY