United Nigeria Airlines @ 4: Founder pushes for tax reduction, aviation reforms

Founder of United Nigeria Airlines, Professor Obiora Okonkwo, has voiced concerns about the effects of multiple taxation on Nigerian carriers, describing it as domestic operators’ nightmare

Okonkwo, who also urged government to create a window for airlines to access funds at reduced rates, said operators paid about 20 charges to agencies in the aviation sector.

He, however, said the forex policy introduced by President Bola Tinubu has been advantageous to airlines, noting that the domestication of the Cape Town Convention Practice Direction has helped to reduce cost operations in the industry.

He spoke at an event held in Abuja to mark the airline’s 4th anniversary.

His words: “One thing that will help the growth of this industry will be for the government to develop a programme that will give the window to local operators to access single-digit loans.

“They need to cut down on the charges the operators pay different agencies of government. They are about 20 in all. The margin of this business is very low and if you have to meet all those charges to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Agency, NCAA, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, you are left with nothing. It is affecting us. We need to have more money to be able to develop, expand and then also improve the working environment for our staff.

“Government must realise that access to credit is very important to us operators because we are competing with people who have access to loans at 3, 5 per cent maximum, and aviation is a global village and we can’t compete with them.

“I think that the foreign policy of the Tinubu administration has been of tremendous advantage to the airline industry. Before he came into power, it was a nightmare for us to convert naira to foreign currencies to pay our obligations.

“As a result, we lost a whole lot of contracts. We lost a lot of vendors. Because you have your money stuck in naira in the bank, and you don’t get the forex that you need. You don’t need to track funds for foreign operators, the government has cleared that, almost a billion dollars.

It has opened up a new window for better relationships. Our reputation and integrity in the international aviation industry is better now. So we are happy with it.

Those policies that I had mentioned, the forex policy, the policy of domesticating Cape Town Convention, and then the new practice direction, all those things actually had helped to reduce so many of the burdens domestic operators hitherto grappled with.”