Keyamo in closed door meeting with AON over threat to suspend flight, increase airfares

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo is in a closed-door meeting with the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) over a 300 percent hike in aviation fuel prices.

Domestic airlines had threatened to increase airfares or suspend flight operations starting 20th of April but the Minister urged them to shelve their plans.

The closed-door session, held at the minister’s conference room in Abuja, includes stakeholders from the aviation and petroleum sectors. Among them is the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, who was represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Patience Onyenkunle.

Also in attendance are the President of the Airline Operators of Nigeria, Alhaji Dr. Abdulmunaf Yunusa Sarina, representatives from Umza Airline, NG Eagle airline, United Nigeria Airlines, and others.

The Minister who spoke briefly before the meeting went I to a close door session said, "This meeting has been called in direct response to the concerns and agitations of our airline operators who are actually threatening to stop flying on Monday. You can imagine that it would have thrown the entire country into chaos.

"As a government we realize the threats and the potency of the threats and as a responsible government we had to call them and appeal to them to just hold action a bit for us to formally intervene and see how this issue can be addressed on all sides both from the side of government and the side of the marketers and all other stakeholders.

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"We must thank AON because they had the option to double and triple the affairs on domestic routes but they also saw the problem that would have caused. First of all it would have overheated the country, secondly they would have priced tickets out of the reach of the ordinary person and so because of this issue we had to quickly call all the stakeholders to this table today.

"I have just finished a meeting with Mr. President on the issue, I came straight from the President's office to this conference, he's aware of this conference and I went to brief him first. I would like to hold a closed-door meeting with the marketers, with other stakeholders on the issues I discussed with Mr. President before we can call the press in."