Nigeria Airways: Keyamo, Fani-Kayode clash over who killed national carrier

Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo has accused former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of hypocrisy over the 2004 liquidation of Nigeria Airways and delays in paying its former workers.

Keyamo was reacting to a video in which Atiku said “Bola made life expensive.”

He said the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, in which Atiku served, left thousands of workers without pensions, while President Bola Tinubu has released ₦36 billion for their entitlements.

“Twenty-two years later, after many of them have died out of frustration, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is now clearing the mess you left behind,” he said.

However, former aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode disagreed, Premium Times reports, saying the airline collapsed due to “chronic insolvency, operational collapse and mismanagement in its operations which took place between 1979 and 1999.”

He said his 2006 memo seeking pension payments was rejected by the Federal Executive Council, with later administrations paying most pensioners. He commended the current payments but said they should have come earlier.