Core investors unsettle Nigeria Air
News & Trends •
source63 the last minute pull out of core investors forced nigeria to suspend the establishment of a national carrier nigeria air information and culture minister lai mohammed has disclosed1 he noted however that the project was still on course but that the federal government was trying to now get a better funding structure for the project and provide the enabling environment1 a government will take a holistic view of any intended project and if the understanding of government at the beginning that the project will either be self-financing or would be financed by her investors and it turns out that such a project can no longer be financed by investors either because they are not forthcoming or that such venture can no longer be viable the government this administration would do a rethink1 now the business of government in business is to provide enabling environment and it is not to become the sole source of finance the sole source of funding and in addition it is much more than funding in trying to get our national carrier1 we also need to look at the thinker aspect overall the federal government believes that this thing should be stepped down now till we get a better funding structure but a situation where this kind of thing would be funded by government it cant do it1 muhammed also dismissed insinuations that the minister of state aviation senator hadi sirika did not carry the federal executive council fec along in the entire process adding that if things did not work out as planned the minister should not be blamed1 it doesnt mean that you see you could start a project with a lot of assurances from many quarters and then at the critical point in time those assurances might not materialize so it does not mean that he didnt carry us along from the beginning from the start the federal executive council fec was privy to everything so if anything happened in between i cannot blame the honourable minister for aviation for that1 the minister however gave the assurance that other projects on the aviation roadmap geared towards repositioning the aviation sector including airport concession mro aircraft leasing company among others would be looked into to see if they could still be executed1 i think what we should do is to look at each of these other projects in their own merits and individually and look at whether they can still be executed but i dont think the government should be condemned or criticized if it decides to step down a particular project1 he said in lagos that the decision became necessary because the federal government resolved not to finance the project alone1 i think that four years in the life of any country is a short time this is a work in progress it does not mean that we have completely abandoned or ended it he added1 in the meantime the central bank of nigeria cbn on wednesday gave a notification to revoke the operating licences of 182 other financial institutions in the country1 according to the list released by the regulator on wednesday 154 of the affected institutions are microfinance banks six are primary mortgage banks while the remaining 22 are finance companies1 the cbn said 62 of the microfinance banks had already closed shop 74 became insolvent 12 were terminally distressed while six voluntarily liquidated1 the cbn listed the primary mortgage banks for revocation as accord savings and loans limited in lagos that failed to recapitalise and ahocol savings and loans limited in anambra state government-owned that closed shop1 other mortgage banks for revocation are trans atlantic savings and loans limited in bayelsa state government-owned that became insolvent royal savings and loans limited in delta state that also closed shop amex savings and loans limited in lagos that failed to recapitalise and supreme savings and loans limited also in lagos that closed shop1 the cbn disclosed that eight finance companies voluntary liquidated 13 failed to recapitalise while one became insolvent1 according to the apex bank the affected institutions are from different states of the federation1 i think it is in the overall interest of the country that we dont embark on a project which has not been well thought out or a project that would probably have to been abandoned midway1