Nigeria Airways: The sad tale of the giant’s exit as captured by Capt. Mshelia
Arguably one of Nigeria’s pride – Nigeria Airways Limited died a few years ago and has since been buried.
With its carcasses sold piecemeal to certain individuals, the dead airline like a bad dream has refused to exit memory often times featuring as major discussion by industry players and stakeholders.
With the memory of the airline refusing to fade away many people shed tears when they dredge into the past with nostalgic feelings about the splendor of its existence.
Stories, reports of how NAL played the Big brother in many rescue missions, evacuations, humanitarian activities in Africa and beyond have been written, how it started as a giant and reduced to mere ashes.
Parts of the remains of the airline is currently in the graveyard at MMIA, Lagos bathed in dust, washed by the rains year in, year out.
The once Giant of African airline like Goliath in the Bible has been dealt a big blow with a sling and a stone not by a mere Boy but by adults who gave birth to it nursing it to maturity and stole all its treasures to themselves and the highest bidder who came by to buy and eat from its spoils.
What contributed to its quick exit from the industry after many years of flying the African skies, European and other continent skies with its green, white, green and the symbol of the eagle which symbolized strength embossed on all its aircraft tail?.
Many concerned stakeholders and Nigerians who were close to the airline have spoken a lot about NAL but they cannot keep mum of its rise and fall because there are lessons to be learnt.
In this interview, Chairman, Westlink Aviation, Captain Ibrahim Mshelia gives his view on what led to the fall of the Nigeria Airways, NAL and on the possibility of merger of Nigeria airlines.
A lot has been said about the defunct Nigeria Airways and its collapse, some claimed the staff were responsible while others fingered the management in its demise, what in your view was responsible for its fall?
First and foremost, I will want to talk on the structure of the airline before talking about the staff and management of the former national carrier. Nigeria Airways was not created for profitability the way it was run and the structure it had. The airline had an annual budget. How can the airline have an annual budget? The government pays for A, B, C and D checks and others. Because the airline had a budget, every government department then flew Nigeria Airways with warrant officers. In the military for instance, from Colonel and above, you flew first class and below, you get economy. For government establishment, from directorship level, you have first class and the rest is economy. And that was how the airline was run. It wasn’t meant for profit making. So, how do you survive?
Also, the presidency didn’t have an aircraft designated to it. Whenever the presidency had a function, they will just pull out an aircraft immediately either for local or international operations. There was a time the scheduled flights of the airline will just be disrupted midway. That was how even the government contributed to the death of the airline.
Now, how did staff and management contribute to its death? It is corruption; everybody was helping himself with the airline. First, everyone was employed based on quota system. You will begin to get it wrong when you apply the quota system in aviation. Quota system is unique in Nigeria for certain reasons, but we should begin to separate what quota system will be applicable in what. Only the best should be taken. In the military, I learnt you cannot just employ anybody to join the military; they share it according to state. The military insists that only the best from each state would be taken, but in public sector, it is the one with a godfather that gets the job.
The Management of the airline would employed mediocre in the places they should not be, give people positions above their level and qualifications, thereby demoralising the other staff who are better qualified than you. also, there were cases in which Stations Managers were sacked or recalled for not doing the biddings of some people in the government especially when they wanted their non-revenue luggage to be given priority above revenue luggage of passengers.
Was quota system part of the reasons the airline ceased to exist?
Quota system is killing the Nigerian system up till now. I am not against quota system in certain things so that we will have equally presentation, but there are some certain things that will require technical qualifications. Dexterity is a gift from God. Those who put the quota system in place looked at the advantages and disadvantages of it and we are supposed to manage and patch it. It had a good intention, but when we start to play politics with it, then, it will continue to work against us.
What is your view about the call for airline merger in Nigeria?
I think we are joking; it is not a culture like Nigeria that airlines will merge. We will never be able to merge because everybody comes with his own model and we will never agree on models. For instance, look at the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) today; we don’t have a body as far as I am concern because some people think their ideas should be superior to others. In a group, you don’t think like that, you have to convince people to marry your idea.
If an airline is run professionally, first it must have the dream of the founding fathers. What is the dream of the founding fathers because it plays a big role in the merger plans? Like the dreams had is that when I retire, I want to have a one per cent shares of in my airline. My dream is that even though I founded it, but I want my great grandchildren to have shares in it.
However, the issue about merger in Nigeria is that people want to have ownership and die with it without transferring it to expatriate that can handle it.
We blame a lot of things for the death of airlines in Nigeria, which are probably not the case for the death of airlines. The most important of them all is the will of the government to have a robust aviation industry. That is not there. If government is actually interested in developing aviation, it will be there in its policies. There will be deliberate policies to grow the industry and this General Aviation will be the solution to it. That is why for me, I advocate for complete autonomy of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) under the current administration. This will do a lot of good for the industry and some of these challenges will be checkmated.
