It’s no longer news that foreign airlines operating out of Nigeria are now kings unto themselves. They set the rules, circumvent all known engagement regimes, block inventories to travel agents, determine payment domain, fix fares against known fare parameters and determine frequencies to enter and exit Nigeria.
About the third quarter of last year, these airlines alleged stringent protocols to the repatriation of their funds, warning that they would no longer to listen to calls for patience and endurance, and reported Nigeria to global aviation authorities, even though same pains were experienced by them elsewhere in Africa and the world at large.
After much delay, Nigeria, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, responded, listing names of foreign airlines and the forex allocations to each of them, even with the House of Representatives organising a peaceful resolution inquest into what had become an apparent forex pandemic.
The National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA) was at that meeting and pleaded for serious intervention to resolve the logjam. And, like a seer seeing through the crystal ball, NANTA warned that a day of Armageddon beckoned in which the airlines would become a law unto themselves.
As predicted by the association but ignored by Nigeria’s aviation regulatory agencies, these airlines struck, first by informing their trade partners (travel agents) through unofficial channels that it was not going to be business as usual.
Pronto, fares at all levels were unilaterally jacked up, with economy tickets selling for about N3 million and business class for N5 million. To change a travel date or adopt a convenient travel plan required between N1.5 million and N1.8 milliom, added to other obnoxious trade rules.
Several failed attempts to make these new colonial merchants see reason by NANTA met the brick wall, and to get official response from the federal government through its relevant agencies was like worshipping in the synagogue of Satan.
Excuses were carefully generated and deployed by the new pharaohs to justify their unwholesome practices and strangulation of the Nigerian travel economy, adjudged as the biggest in Africa and with the best rebound record lifeline after the COVID-19 pandemic on the entire African continent’s travel space.
And with both segments of Nigeria’s travelling publics groaning at the merciless merchandising mechanics adopted by these airlines, perfectly and unabashedly daring government to stop their full reign on fare regimes, travel professionals in the organised private sector felt the time had come to deflate the humongous fare profiteering by the foreign invaders of Nigeria’s highly unregulated travel ecosystem.
On Friday in lagos, NANTA president, Mrs. Susan Akporiaye, spoke to the travel media and berated government for not being government “over the ongoing repressive profiteering by foreign carriers.”
Mrs. Akporiaye wept, concerned that Nigerian travel trade professionals have been shortchanged, undermined, with many closing shop and their clients on desperate cross-border runs, seeking to purchase cheaper tickets, with Nigerian gains tailing the hypertensive fare-induced migration.
The shock revelations by NANTA’s leadership, with their veterans lending support, suddenly escalated into a lamentation party as each travel trade professional in attendance gave different pictures of the the airlines’ impudence and outright disregard for how their fund repatriation pound of flesh response affected their survival and livelihood.
Apart from job losses and threats to the safety of oppressed Nigerian travelling public, NANTA wondered at government’s slow pace at approving interested Nigerian airline operators to harvest BASA agreements with countries where these foreign carriers operate into Nigeria, noting such strategic response would drive healthy competition and offer the Nigerian travelling public more cheaper options.
However, a few foreign airlines signed off from this gang-up against Nigerians and Nigeria, and remained faithful to Nigerian trade partners.
Qatar Airways and Air Morocco are said to play by the rules, and, in fact, without their open support for NANTA members and the Nigerian travelling public, the Nigerian travel economy would have totally collapsed, left to be scavenged bone and flesh by other conniving foreign carriers.
Yinka Folami, vice-president, NANTA, Lagos zone, has lost a pound of flesh over the highly abnormal scenario, which has made his members very restive. He wished it was a sports boxing game in which the six-footer would have gained a technical knockout victory over the uncaring crowd of business partners.
Who bails the diabetic travel trade economy out of the hands of these insensitive foreign trade lords? Where is International Air Transport Association in all this? Do we still have government officials in charge of the aviation industry? What step will NANTA take? These and many more questions will need answers before Nigerians are pushed to chasing these travel economy colonialists out of Nigeria. The countdown has begun!