The withdrawal of the passenger flight services on Nigerian routes by the National carrier of the United Arab Emirates, Emirates Airlines, over foreign airlines’ trapped funds, estimated to have reached over $500 million is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Friday.
The Guardian reports that the National carrier of the United Arab Emirates, Emirates Airlines, has withdrawn passenger flight services on Nigerian routes over foreign airlines’ trapped funds, estimated to have reached over $500 million.
This is coming as more foreign airlines have also hinted at reviewing their future operations in the country, based on the final outcome of the recent intervention by the House of Representatives.
Emirates, in an official memo to the Ministry of Aviation in early October, had notified that barring repatriation of about 80 per cent of its accumulated funds in Nigeria by month-end, it would suspend operations by October 29.
The Guardian learnt that the ‘commercial decision’ to stop Lagos and Abuja operations was hastened by the recent visa ban on Nigerians travelling to Dubai, coupled with the alleged nonchalance of the Central Bank Nigeria (CBN) to defray trapped funds.
Travel agencies yesterday regretted the “avoidable development”, saying Nigerian travellers would have more difficulties reaching other parts of the world without Emirates.
About two months after CBN intervened in the trapped fund’s crisis, with the release of $264 million out of $465 million, there has been no reprieve as the foreign airlines’ monies in Nigeria continue to accumulate and are now in excess of $500 million.
The funds are proceeds of international flight tickets that had been sold in naira but starved of foreign exchange (dollars) equivalent to repatriation to the airlines’ home countries.
The newspaper says that of the over 38.8 million people affected by flooding in Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Chad and South Sudan, Save the Children International (SCI), yesterday confirmed that the most populous black nation accounted for 2.5 million, with 1.25 million being children.
The breakdown further showed that about 1.3 million, including 400,000 million kids were affected in India, as 544,000 infants of Chad’s one million population witnessed the pain, while South Sudan’s 900,000 populace had 463,000 offspring suffering the natural disaster.
SCI’s Global Director, Child Poverty, Climate and Urban, Yolande Wright, said thousands of people were killed and millions displaced in the five nations.
She confirmed that water flowing above dangerous levels left a trail of destruction in each country, with homes submerged, crops destroyed and schools forced to close, thus jeopardising the education of thousands of kids.
This came as the Federal Government, yesterday, inaugurated a presidential committee for the development of a comprehensive plan of action to prevent the tragedy in Nigeria.
President Muhammadu Buhari charged the panel on diligence.
Represented by the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, the President gave the committee a reference of three-month to include: Assessing and reviewing existing plans and policies on the management of flood disasters in Nigeria; identifying and working with critical stakeholders on flood disaster management, as well as visiting selected strategic flood-affected and prone areas.
He said the setting was a two-tier institutional arrangement – a steering committee and a technical working group. The former is coordinated by the minister, while the latter is headed by the Director-General of the National Water Resource Institute, Prof. Emmanuel Adanu.
The Punch reports that the Federal Government may present a supplementary budget to the National Assembly due to a further depreciation of the naira and galloping inflation that have made the 2023 budget nearly unrealistic.
The 2023 budget benchmarks the foreign exchange at N435/dollar and inflation at 17.10 per cent but the severe scarcity of dollars means that the local currency may head for N500/$ in the NAFEX market and up to N1000/$ in the parallel market in 2023.
Dollar closed N895 on both Lagos and Abuja parallel markets, spiking fears that the doomsday prediction of N1000/$ by December may come to fruition.
Similarly, floods and global crisis due to Russia-Ukraine war could further worsen inflation and poverty in the country, making the projections untenable.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly is billed to go ahead with consideration and passage of the budget as proposed in the Appropriation Bill laid before it by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), despite the major difference in the exchange rates.
The federal legislature may advise the executive to forward a supplementary budget to reflect the recent sharp fall in the value of naira against United States dollar, it was reliably learnt on Thursday.
At the House of Representatives, top officials who are working on the money bill told our correspondent that the lawmakers might not tinker with the parameters of the budget, which, according to them, were based on the 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper passed by the parliament.
In the MTEF/FSP, the National Assembly had, among other parameters, approved an exchange rate of N437.57 to a dollar and an oil benchmark of $73 per barrel.
However, in the Appropriation Bill laid by the President before a joint session of the National Assembly on October 7, 2022, the Federal Government proposed an oil benchmark of $70 per barrel and an exchange rate of N435.57 to a dollar.
The newspaper says that the Federal Government has inaugurated an implementation committee to halt the constant rejection of Nigerian products at the international market.
Speaking during the inauguration on Thursday in Abuja, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Chief Niyi Adebayo, said the team was expected to implement the recommendations of the technical committee in record time.
“It would be recalled that on 16th September, 2022 I received the report submitted by members of the Technical Committee on Nigeria Agro-Export Reject with recommendations aimed at addressing the challenges of rejection of our agro-exports at the international market.
“Suffice it to state that a number of activities have been outlined to implement the recommendations of the Technical Committee and it is the task of the Implementation Committee to diligently ensure that they are properly articulated for the growth and development of the export sub-sector of the economy.”
GIK/APA