Nigerians to pay N120,000 for flights if…

Allen Onyema, the Chief Executive Officer of Airpeace, has disclosed that Nigerians might pay as much as N120,000 for flights if urgent action is not taken to bring the price of Aviation fuel to a reasonable benchmark, despite the new deal between oil marketers and the Airline Operators of Nigeria.

The two bodies had agreed to bring the price of Jet A1 aviation fuel down from N670 per litre to N500 per litre.

The agreement was reached on Monday during the investigative hearing by the House ad hoc committee investigating the hike in the price of jet fuel.

It would be recalled that the outcry by the aviation stakeholders over the hike of fuel from N190 per litre to N670 per litre had caught the attention of the Federal Government.

During the session, Mele Kyari, the GMD of NNPC Limited, converged a meeting with the marketers and the airline operators, and after about 20 minutes of the side meeting, the agreement was reached.

In addition, the NNPC Limited GMD also agreed to the request by the airline operators to be given licences to import the aviation fuel by themselves.

He added that, apart from the high cost of aviation fuel, airline operators are paying threefold of what other airlines pay as insurance in other climes. He added that since they can buy aircraft that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they also have the money to import aviation fuel.

Earlier, the Deputy Speaker had expressed his disappointment over the failure of the NNPC and the marketers to bring down the price as agreed in the last meeting. He alleged that the two parties were using unnecessary technical terms to confuse the House over the issue.

On his part, the NNPC GMD said, as of present, 19 companies have stock of aviation fuel, but the pricing still remains a thing of contention between the companies and airline operators.He added that they have engaged other companies to supply aviation fuel to airlines in order to increase its availability.