• Urge the government to approve fuel licenses for operators as NNPC bosses weigh options
• The nation has an oversupply of jet fuel, NMDRA asserts
• Court orders Arik Air to pay the fired pilot $126,500 within 30 days The country’s carriers said yesterday they had only three days left to fly due to the high cost of aviation fuel.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Air Peace, Mr. Allen Onyema, speaking on behalf of the operators, said this during a public hearing by the Adhoc House of Representatives Committee that drafted aviation fuel in Abuja. Onyema accused aviation fuel marketers of not speaking the truth about the actual cost of aviation fuel, saying if drastic measures were not taken, the plane ticket would be at least N120,000.
He said: “If we continue this way, the last ticket you would have will be around N120,000. And marketers have refused to tell us how much their acquisition unit costs.
He urged the House of Representatives to give airline operators to adopt aviation fuel, saying this would reduce unnecessary costs on citizens. “What we ask from the government is to give us the right to adopt aviation fuel. What others used in insuring one plane is what we used in insuring three planes in Nigeria.
So, the Nigerian airline was off on arrival,” he said. Deputy Speaker of the House, Ahmed Wase, said the committee was only pursuing facts and wanted to protect Nigeria’s interests. “We don’t want to compromise what is in our country’s interests,” he said He berated marketers for covering up some facts, saying their analysis wasn’t really the facts on the committee.
He also questioned why some government agencies would not tell the truth about the scarcity and cost of aviation fuel. “We must look to protect Nigeria’s interests and not the other way around,” he said. He said the committee will ensure that things are really done in the interests of the country, adding that the basic principles of governance are people’s welfare.
The Minority Leader, Toby Okechukwu, raises the question of what determines marketers’ prices and why they hoard products. He said such actions by marketers brought a lot of dysfunction to the country’s economy. “If we say that the cost of aviation fuel is N450 from the Central Bank of Nigeria, who agrees he asks.
He also accused the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited of not identifying the person managing the product.
Meanwhile Mr. Ugbugo Ukoha, Executive Director of Distribution Systems for Storage and Retail Infrastructure at Nigeria’s Midstream and Downstream Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), said the country has an oversupply of Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK). This as the Managing Director of NNPC Group, Mr. Mele Kyari, said the company would consider granting licenses to airline operators to import aviation fuel.
Kyari also agreed that aviation fuel will now be priced at N500 per liter, as opposed to the current N670 per liter.
NGI 
SKJ