New National Carrier — Air Nigeria — for inauguration April 2022, says Aviation Minister

Nigeria’s new national carrier, Air Nigeria, will debut by April 2022, according to the Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika.

The new national carrier will be run by a company with the Federal Government having a 5% stake, Nigerian entrepreneurs 46%, while the remaining 49% will be reserved for some strategic equity partners including foreign investors.

Briefing State House correspondents on Wednesday after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, disclosed that the new national carrier will create about 70,000 jobs for Nigerians.

Also speaking, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, said the N250 billion monthly subsidy by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has made remitting money into the federation account to be at almost zero level.

“The government can no longer sustain petroleum subsidy cost which currently stands at about N250 billion monthly.

“lf you multiply N250 billion times 12 months, that is about N3 trillion.

“So the Petroleum Industry Act has a provision that all petroleum products must be deregulated. In the 2020 budget, we made a provision to assume that at the maximum by the end of June we must exit subsidy.

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“This last FAAC the subsidy cost to the Federation was N243 billion. So if we look at a cost of about 250 billion per month, and it has been increasing consistently. So we are expecting something around N120 billion per month from NNPC.

“Now we are getting to a point where NNPC is remitting near zero and if we don’t stop we will get to a point where they will tell you pay me this for managing the fuel provision in the country.

Persecondnews recalls that the federal government had hinted of replacing the subsidy by early 2022 with N5000 monthly transportation grant to about 40 million “poorest Nigerians”.