Please Don’t Leave Nigeria FG begs foreign airlines

The Federal Government has appealed to foreign airlines operating in Nigeria, which are in the process of downgrading or suspending their operations in the country, to reconsider their decisions.

The foreign carriers had on several occasions decried their inability to repatriate earnings to their home countries as a result of the monetary policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Government.

This has made some of them to scale down their flight frequencies to Nigeria, while a few others have totally halted their operations in the country.

But the Federal Government explained that the challenges currently besetting the aviation industry and other sectors of the economy would soon become a thing of the past.

The Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, made the appeal when he received the West African Regional Manager for Emirates Airlines, Manoj Gopi Nair, in his office in Abuja on Wednesday.

According to PUNCH, Sirika told his guests that the government was not unaware of the issues that had created operational difficulties for both domestic and foreign airlines, such as unavailability of foreign exchange, aviation fuel shortage and infrastructural deficiency.

He said the government had been up and doing to ensure the creation of an environment that was both enabling and profitable for the airlines to operate.

The minister, according to a statement from the Aviation ministry, recalled the recent concession given to airlines by the CBN to enable the carriers to procure the required forex to clear the backlog of matured obligations.