The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has said the Federal Government may recover and sell the assets of Dana Air to refund passengers and travel agents whose funds remain trapped following the suspension of the airline’s operations.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday during the ministry’s fourth quarter stakeholders’ engagement themed “leveraging public feedback to drive excellence in aviation services,” Keyamo said the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) would be directed to investigate why the outstanding refunds had not been made.
He explained that the decision to suspend Dana Air was based entirely on safety concerns.
“For Dana, the problem is that it was a choice between safety and disaster. So we didn’t take the commercial thing as priority. The priority was safety, and we all looked at the damning reports that we had met on the table,” he said.
“It was a decision of the NCAA to suspend them, but I pushed them to say, look, these are the reports we are seeing on the table about safety record, about lack of standards that put the lives of Nigerians at risk.
” If they continue flying, I don’t know whether most of us will be here. Many of us would have been victims of one of those flights. God forbid.”
Keyamo said he had directed Acting NCAA Director-General Chris Najomo to ensure that trapped funds are recovered.
“I have asked Najomo to dig deep to find out how those passengers and agents will be refunded. He has to dig deep on that,” he said.
He added that anyone linked to Dana Air would not be allowed to re-enter the aviation sector under any guise until outstanding debts were settled.
“One solution will also be that if that same individual or those entities are trying to come back to aviation under any guise, whether to go and register a new AOC or use any business within the aviation sector, they have to go and settle their debts first,” he said.
Keyamo said the airline’s assets should be used to pay affected passengers.
“We should look at their assets. There are assets that are still available. Let them sell their assets. Let’s cannibalize their revenue and pay people. Let’s find a way to go after their assets and get money to pay Nigerians who are owed,” he said, adding, “NCAA should do that because they can’t get away with it.”
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