Airpeace Founder, ALLEN ONYEMA Opens Up

• On His New London Route Deal

• What He Told SEGUN ODEGBAMI

It was on his programme: 90 minutes with Mathematical on Odegbami’s Eagle Sports Radio 103.7FM on Saturday 9th March 2024.

Below are excerpts.

Stories about you have been awashed in the news media of late, particularly related to your conquests of that route to England. Why is that UK route so important?

On this issue of Aviation and the United Kingdom I don’t see any big deal about the United Kingdom route. No big deal about it. You see, for about 6 years now, we’ve always wanted to go into the UK. The UK has had a very huge traffic, over the years. 2 airlines of the UK have monopolised or have been monopolising the route. It is one of the most lucrative routes for all the airlines in the world. But both of them could not even serve the routes alone, even though there have been some kind of multiple frequencies. BA does one flight out of Lagos, another out of Abuja, Virgin Atlantic does one out of Lagos. So we have 21 frequencies a week, none by my country’s airline. But you have the other airlines Lufthansa,  Liberia, KLM France, Qatar, Emirates Airways, Rwanda, Egypt, and even South Africa Airways, all doing same Nigerian London routes, but transiting through their countries. Ethiopia too has a huge traffic, so one begins to wonder why is it that no Nigerian airline has joined this. For a long time now, it’s not been the fault of the Nigeria airlines. Airpeace was given designation by the President Buhari administration to fly London. Before you start getting into the UK you must obtain what they call TCO permit, its called Take Country Operation permit. You must obtain it, it is given in Europe , you have to get that one before you go into any European State, United Kingdom inclusive. When you get that, before you get the operating permit into any country, you have to get that one first. It is a heavy audit. They have to audit you, if you pass it then the country you choose from that hemisphere will give you the operating permit.

Over time, most Nigerian airlines have not been able to obtain the TCO, but not because the Nigerian Airlines wouldn’t want to participate in that route. We were being frustrated. Even at a time, the all powerful Nigeria Airways was also frustrated.

There was a time Nigeria was stopped from coming to the UK not because it wanted to stop, in the 90s, but the UK woke up one morning and said that the aircraft wasn’t well maintained and they feared that it was unsafe. They banned Nigeria Airways from coming in. This is what I call international aero politics. I clapped for them, every country is trying to protect their own, so protect yours. But Abacha rose to the occasion, he said no problem, he allowed BA to leave London, as they were approaching Naija, Abacha turned the air plane back. He reciprocated, no wasting time. They had to come and beg before they started coming to Nigeria again.

They offered Nigeria Airways back their operating permits but it took one year. Abacha refused. In fact he had to die before they were allowed into Nigeria again. We thought all of us had learnt our lessons. But the truth is that it is not Britain stopping you most times. In our own case I can’t put it solely on the head of the British authorities. No way

Our own Nigerian brothers in government and in government agencies are part of the problems. I keep on saying it, anything that will happen tomorrow let it happen  this minute, I  don’t give a damn because it’s very hurtful when Air Peace applied for the TCO in Europe. They wrote our Civil Aviation Authority. Do you know Air Peace applied to fly the route too for the TCO? Nobody from the federation authority approached us. Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority approached us. They wrote to them. They denied us that they didn’t know that we applied. Meanwhile we got our destination from the Federal Government from the Minister of Aviation. So why were we denied? Who were they reserving the London Routes for?

That’s left for all of us to figure out.

Who were they reserving it for? The sky is too big. The problem we have in this country is that we are too myopic in thinking. We are too shallow in thinking, we lack patriotism. Everybody wants to grab and grab and grab and grab onto their death.

The day you will die you will not even know where those things you must have acquired are, you’re just left with your God and your God alone to answer.

We don’t think about our country. I feel so bad this moment, I cry at times about some of the things Air peace has gone through, to operate in this country, I am not one of those who beat ethnic drums, I am a nationalist, I love this country. I love this country unapologetically I like this country, I love it, I love my nation, and I have nothing to prove to anybody dead or alive, about how I feel about my nation and for the avoidance of doubt I’m not interested in politics because even politicians sometimes they get scared of what I do…

I’ve said it several times I’m not interested in politics, anything I’m doing now I did them from secondary school. I don’t discriminate, I love this nation. I could have been anywhere out of this country like any other kid, I didn’t know whatever God imbued in me that made me love my nation right from secondary school. I left northern Nigerian when there was an angry riot in Zaria. How old was I? I was a teenager from UI. I didn’t know I would later be involved in a conflict management in life so anybody accusing me of playing to the gallery of trying to build myself for political whatever, the person should have his head examined. The person should first of all go and look at my track records.

Let me just interject at this point because you know I can see the pain, the hurt and all of that. But at this moment in time I tell you it doesn’t matter what people say or do, the universe itself is celebrating you and your achievements and I want you to now look at it.

You have had to pass through those crucibles of fire for you to get to where we are now and it is a happy note because despite all the shenanigans, despite all the obstacles, here we are talking about the success of Allen Onyema and Air Peace. And the future’s so bright. I went to Ghana, I was coming back from Cote d’ivoire and about 2:00am in the morning we went to this garage to look for food to eat and because I branded that van, I branded it with some logos including Air Piece, this guy was just passing by, a street boy, just passing by and he saw the Air peace sticker, I think we have a recording this is it.

He said the only man that rescued Nigerians from South Africa, the city where they slaughter our brothers, where Air Peace came to rescue our brothers and took them to where they belong!

You see Allen, this was a street boy who never knew you, at 2:00am in the morning in the city of Accra they were praying for you. So don’t be distracted by all these things around you now, let us project into the future. Thank God for everything that has happened and I know it hurts but it hurts me too.

When we see Nigerians doing all these damage to our own people, rejecting our own and so on but man, you stand ahead of the rest of us.

You are a shining star, you are up there now and we are particular about  what you are going to do after now.

So let’s look again at that. Let’s look now at that aviation thing. Air Peace just came in we haven’t even started you announced prices, you announced the cost of flying to the UK and suddenly everything starts to drop. They were charging us humongous sums of money to fly to the UK, we thought that that was how much it costs, things were so bad, but suddenly you bring up your own price and the whole scenario is changed. Is it that these people were just exploiting us before? Why didn’t they bring it down? Now tell us about that whole scenario.

Yeah so this Monopoly or duo poly or I don’t know the kind of poly I’m going to link to it. The foreign airlines have actually been exploiting this country. They  put a lot of drain on the Dollar. Even people in government we’ve been crying: support Nigerian airlines. We’ve been crying that when you support Nigerian airlines you protect our treasury, the Nigerian treasury. But they look at the individual businesses as the business of the individuals that own them. No, Allen Onyema doesn’t own Air Peace, Air Peace belongs to the over 220 million Nigerians. If you touch Virgin Atlantic coming to Nigeria, if you touch them or  treat them in a way that is not good, the entire British government will come falling on you. They won’t tell you, oh it is owned by Richard Branson and then let it be the time Delta came to Nigeria in December 2, 2007 the entire state department of US followed them. In Nigeria you’re left alone.

So as I was saying we were prevented from going into London by our own people. They stopped us for 4 years from applying to re-applying until God helped us, God so kind I fought my way. God helped us and today we are there and you’ve seen it for yourself and you said it now because the foreign airlines, no foreign airline wants a Nigerian airline to succeed. Nigeria is a lucrative market for all the airlines. I know an African airline, a giant African airline that’s so jittery about the success of international airline because the success of international airlines will mean problems for that country.

Our government officials collide with them to stop their own. They mark Nigerian airlines, they demonize us, they give them multiple frequencies and multiple destinations and some have about as many as seven destinations into your country.

Nigerians before today, in the last one year we were paying humongously to do a 6 hours flight to the UK. My own staff, my Chief Operating Officer, Victoria Olajide that traveled to the UK three weeks ago paid 15 million naira to do a 6 hour flight. I have another staff that traveled on economy and paid about 5 million naira for economy. Meanwhile, Air Peace flies to India which is the total of 24 hours 12 hours, going 12 hours per minute and we charge about one million naira for it. Air Peace flies to China Guangzhou, Guangzhou is about 13 hours going, 14 hours coming back, so these government officials, these agencies that allowed Air Peace to be doing  China and India, Saudi Arabia and others didn’t find Air Peace worthy to do 6 hours, a meager 6 hours!

So now we’ve proved to Nigerians  we are serious and this is a disruptor. We have disrupted the market, and this I knew from beginning, nobody will save your country except us, except Nigerians.

Tell them now, the services that you are going to be providing?

This is an airline that flies to China. We are the only airline in West Africa already in China and India which is a 14 hours flight non stop with our equipment and you are asking will they be able to pay? Are we safe?

Will they be able to fly to the UK, a 6 hours flights? It’s like going to Abuja  for us. We have the equipment. They talked about Safety, the Air Peace safety parameters are unrivaled. Air Peace can challenge any airline worldwide. Do you know who maintains those equipment? Those equipment have been maintained by the best maintenance organization in the world and the most expensive, the Israeli aerospace industries they are they are here 2/4/7. They are the most expensive and the best in the world. They make planes.

Because I have flight phobia, when I floated Air Peace I decided to go for the best but it is costing us millions of dollars every month but it’s the best and even those in the civil Aviation authority presently, they know what Air Peace stands for when it comes to safety. They know what Air Peace can offer, safety first of all. Like I said, you can’t beat Air Peace, Air Peace has gotten its IOSA certification which is an international safety audit, it’s not been audited by Nigeria. We got it in less than two years of operations because of the work we put in place. We had it renewed, because every two years you renew your IOSA, you may fail it, we never failed IOSA, the TCO audit of Europe UK,  you saw it, when they came to audit it they couldn’t believe it, okay

Help us start with two things, I’m talking about the most important thing in aviation that is safety, we are going to offer them safety

What of service, affordable service, affordable fares, save the naira from being devalued, Nigerians are going to pay us in naira and they are paying affordable fares. How about students who have been studying abroad for 5 years they couldn’t come back and at the end of the day they become westernized. We lose them to the foreign countries.

How about them, their parent sold their houses, cars and everything. I saw someone who told me Allen, God bless you, I sold my house to keep my child in a school in the UK but now that child can not come back home, but now, besides reducing economy from 1.2 million naira which, less than a thousand dollars, on the same amount of money we are giving up 15% for students, so that our students can come back home. It’s only when they can start coming home for holidays they can have ties with this country, If not so in the next 40 years we would be left with only old men in this country.

The question Nigerians should be asking is why didn’t these airlines offer the flying public these fares in the past, Nigerians should not be fooled, we should not allow ourselves to be fooled, the high and mighty if you want to protect jobs in Nigeria, if you want to save naira, fly Air Peace.

Where are you taking Air Peace to, because just listening to you and the passion with which you speak and what you are doing, are you taking on Richard Branson or who is the biggest airline operator in the world now as an individual, I don’t know, but where are you taking us you this man, do you even rest?

And the third question is when do you have time to rest what do you do to pass time? You are an athlete, a footballer, you don’t do any of that again, and you don’t play tennis.

I used to play tennis, in the last six months I have not really played my table tennis. I used to play in the office, once it is 5 o’clock I go out to play table tennis for 3 hours, go have my shower again and then continue with work, but for the past six month I have not exercised to be honest and you’ve been asking about what I do with my free time, I go on YouTube, I like listening to music, and all that, I do that, cause I find it difficult to go to bed before 3 o’clock, by 3 I am still working. Most times its after midnight I attend to my mails. I get reports from the business and other things and I start looking at them and see what I can do, I am a workaholic, my wife has been on my head. You know, my daughter Nnena is always telling me daddy you are always looking sleep deprived, I don’t think I have ever had 4 hours sleep, but recently sometimes I force myself during the day to sleep, sometimes I sleep in the office, during work hours when I couldn’t take it anymore, I just shut my door and lay on the sofa and get some sleep.

Where are you taking us?

I know that aviation is a catalyst for economies, we’ve not been able to invest in aviation adequately in this country. The aviation infrastructure here is decaying. We need to do something about it, and the penchant for allowing ourselves to be stigmatized by ourselves in this country is also not good. Already Nigeria is stigmatized in the international comity of aviations and we come back, we even help in fueling that stigma. It’s not good, so I have looked around and said what made other Nigeria airline fail? This other Nigerian airlines didn’t fail be cause they were not being run properly, they failed because the owners of those airlines must have succeeded in other businesses before they invested in aviation or airline. They failed because of so many factors such as lack of government support, lack of ease of doing business. They frustrate you from the start. If you know what  I do to run Air Peace you will pity me. Let me tell Nigerians, let them hear this, Nigeria airlines maintain their planes under the rain and the sun. How many…. hangers do we have in Nigeria, because it’s not that those airlines would not want to have maintainance hangers, if you can buy an aircraft that is costing billions, you can as well build a maintenance hanger. Why is it that Nigeria engineering is not at par with the world? With what our pilots do, our pilots are one of the best in the world, our pilots can compete with any, in fact we struggle to keep them down here with good wages, but the engineering aspect, we’ve not gotten to that level but this is something we can do. But airlines don’t have hangers not becuase they can not do it, go and apply to federal port authority for hanger, the first issue they should address in this country is the ease of doing business. Air Peace would have given this country one of their best MROs that is maintenance outfit that would be maintaining planes for other airlines of the world because we would have brought in foreign expertise to train our people, set up a very good MRO. Air Peace alone I think spent in 2022, the financials I saw, over 68 billion in 2022 for maintenance. That money went abroad. We spent billions of dollars about 3 to 4 million dollars doing C check,

At times you do up to 10 planes in a year, plus other spares and other repairs you do intermittently abroad to go and do and come back. We could do these things in the country and save the naira. We do things we’re not supposed to do and we blame it on President Tinubu. Now is the time for us to do the right thing. We paid for hanger land for us to be able to build a maintenance hanger, I have never seen a country where you will be maintaining your plane and …..

What we do is to use the Air Force hanger, that’s when it’s free. If it’s not free, you pack your plane. It depletes your capacity because there’s no hanger to go. There are certain repairs you cannot do outside by regulation so you have to wait on the maintenance hanger by the Airforce base, where is this done? Air Peace, wanted to build a very big MRO in this country we paid federal airport authority for land 7 years ago, as I speak to you I don’t have the land yet, Air Peace does not have that land yet. I am the one that said it, anything that wants to happen tomorrow, let it happen today. Government has not given Air Peace the land it paid for 7 years ago. Minister after minister, government after government we’ve been crying. As I speak to you I don’t have access to the so called land yet. As at three years ago I got a Nigerian firm, a construction firm based in Nigeria to build a hanger for us, the bill came to about 8.7 million dollars, seven days ago it was about 1.7 billion. Later they  buried it again after two years it became about two point something billion. They buried it again, about three point something they buried it again about four point something as at last year it became to 9 billion. Now you were telling me that if they give it to me today it might be up to 20 million dollars. This is what we’ve done to ourselves sheer wickedness, thinking that you’re doing Allen Onyema. You’re not doing Allen Onyema.

How many houses do I live in? If I shut down the airline today I don’t have anything to fear, in fact I will have happiness but when you look at the thousands of faces you’ve given a means of livelihood, those are the people sustaining the airline, those are the people making us to want to carry on. When you look at your country men and women, you say oh, if I were not here, this thing could have happened. You continue and let it get to the ears of the president that an airline, the largest airline in its country, the largest airline in the whole of west and central Africa operating out of Nigeria does not have a land for maintenance of its planes to be able to build a hangar and that this airline paid  for that land 7 years ago and till date it has not been given that land