Foreign airlines threaten strike, seek quarterly payment of unrepatriated funds

Foreign airlines in Nigeria, under the aegis of the Association of Foreign Airlines and Representatives in Nigeria (AFARN), have threatened to strike over unrepatriated funds in the country.

The warning comes a week after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced the payment of $61.64 million to foreign airlines through various deposit money banks (DMBs).

Speaking to TheCable on Sunday, Kingsley Nwokoma, AFARN president, expressed disappointment at the amount paid by the government.

Instead, he suggested a quarterly payment of the airlines’ blocked funds in the country.

He said the association hopes the government will look into and improve the situation.

“Like I have suggested, if they can do quarterly payment of these funds, that will help,” the AFARN president said.

“As you know, every operation of the foreign airlines is predicated on dollars (landing fee, catering, handling) and we cannot be using money from other currencies to be servicing Nigeria. That is not right.

“If it were like $300 million or $250 million, it is okay at least. But it is a situation and it is only the government and the CBN that can look into it.”

‘WE EXPECT $300M PAYMENT’

Speaking on the planned strike, Nwokoma said Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development, had assured the union that the unrepatriated funds would be cleared.

“We have spoken to the minister and the minister has promised to look into it. It is a new government and if the government can do $61 million, we expect them to tell us tomorrow that they can do $300 million or they can do $250 million,” he said.

“The thing is nobody is in any business to lose so if we can’t repatriate our money, what are we doing here.”

Since July 2022, when the total amount reached $464 million, foreign airlines have struggled to repatriate their revenues.

Due to the unrepatriated funds, Emirates Airlines, in August 2022, suspended flight operations into the country.

British Airways (BA) also closed its inventory to Nigeria in the global distribution system (GDS) — an act that prevented local travel agencies from making bookings from their portals, preventing local travel firms from making bookings through their websites.

Subsequently, in August 2022, the CBN released the sum of $265 million to foreign airlines operating in the country to the settle outstanding ticket sales.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), as at April 2023, the blocked funds in Nigeria increased to $812.2 million, saying Nigeria now has the highest amount of unrepatriated airlines’ funds in the world.