Federal Government Mulls Clearing Dana Air Debts With Airline’s Assets

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has disclosed that the federal government may go after the assets of Dana Air to refund trapped funds of passengers, airline travel agents and other debts owed by the airline.

This is even as the minister said he would direct the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to probe the reasons why the funds trapped by the airline were yet to be refunded.

Keyamo, who stated this on Tuesday in Abuja at the ministry’s fourth quarter stakeholder engagement in Abuja, noted that the government suspended the operations of the airline as a safety procedure.

On actions to be taken to recover the trapped funds, Keyamo said, “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 met on the table.

“It was a decision of the NCAA to suspend them but I pushed them to say, look, this is the reports we are seeing on the table about safety record, about lack of standards that puts 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 further added that he has asked the Director General and CEO of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Captain Chris Ona Najomo, to dig deep to find out how those passengers and agents will be refunded.

“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 aviation sector, they have to go and settle their debts first.

“We should look at their assets. There are assets that are still available. Let them sell their assets. Let’s get their revenue and pay people. Let’s find a way to go after their assets and get money to pay Nigerians who are owed. NCAA should do that because they can’t get away with it,” the minister said.