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Leadership (Abuja)

Nigeria: Saving Country From Virgin Nigeria

Jerry Uwah

6 May 2008

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opinion

The crew of a leading European airline recently taunted a group of Nigerian passengers protesting ill-treatment by the airline and told them to fly their national carrier if they were not happy with what they were getting. European and even American airlines have no respect for Nigerian passengers because they know that they have little or no options when it comes to falling back to their so-called national flag carrier. Their action is premised on the fact that the Nigerian government is apathetic to what happens to its subjects.

The arrogant crew members of the European airline mentioned above were apparently referring to Virgin Nigeria Airways as Nigeria's flag carrier. Virgin Nigeria rose from the ruins of the defunct Nigeria Airways and was consequently conceived as a national flag carrier. But from all indications, the airline is a British airline with the covet design of clipping the competitive wings of Nigeria's flag carrier. That is how the American government sees it and for that reason, it has refused to allow the perceived Nigerian flag carrier to fly direct from any Nigerian airport to the US.

The US government cannot understand why someone would sell 49 per cent of its airline to a foreign competitor only to turn around and call it a flag carrier. The highest any government ever allowed a foreign airline to hold in its flag carrier is 30 per cent. But Virgin Nigeria is just the reverse of that. The current predicament of Virgin Nigeria Airways stems from its skewed ownership structure. The business community is a very tricky environment. The survival strategy of all successful businesses is built around the idea of killing competition.

MacDonnell Douglass, a leading aircraft manufacturer in the US which built the high- flying DC-10 wide-bodied aircraft and the dreaded F-16 fighter plane, was a thorn in the flesh of Boeing Corporation, the world's garrison commander in aircraft manufacturing. Each time there was a major defence contract in the US, MacDonnell Douglass would compete fiercely with Boeing. And it often won. The same thing was happening in the civil airliner market.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron curtain in Europe, the reduction in global military tension presented a chance for closer collaboration between the two American rivals. In the process of the collaboration, Boeing bought heavily into MacDonnell Douglass in 1996 and killed it in the guise of merger. Back home in Nigeria, a similar scenario presented itself in the mid-1990s when government-owned National Salt Company in Otta, Ogun State was giving the Dangote Group sleepless nights in terms of competition. Somewhere along the line, the federal government offered National Salt for sell. The Dangote Group willingly grabbed the opportunity. The company bought National Salt and killed it.

Within months of the purchase, all key personnel of the privatised company were transferred to Dangote Salt while the plant at Otta became a desolate waste. I perceive the buy-and–kill strategy in the game plan of the Virgin Atlantic Group, the core investor and technical partner of Virgin Nigeria. Nigeria is a big market to all the leading airlines in the world. And Nigeria Airways as a going concern, even as inefficient as it was, had been thorn in the flesh of competitors. When government interference and endemic corruption eventually killed the Nigerian flag carrier, leading European airlines, especially British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, heaved a sigh of relief. For years, all the lucrative European routes to Lagos were serviced unilaterally by European airlines.

Then the federal government made frantic efforts to float a national flag carrier. As usual, corruption and personal interest of key government officials stood the way of the project. At a certain point, someone hastily incorporated a company in Britain with a capital base of 10,000 pound sterling and used that as a multi-purpose vehicle for serving as core investor in what was to be known as Air Nigeria. As the search for a national flag carrier became increasingly futile, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his characteristic bullish tactic invited Richard Branson, the executive chairman of the Virgin Group to serve as core investor and technical partner to the perceived Nigerian flag carrier.

The former president almost single-handedly steered the negotiation with Branson. The aviation industry had little or no input in the transaction. By the time Branson got Obasanjo's approval, he would have celebrated it as an authority to clip the wings of the Nigerian flag carrier. Developments since the commencement of fight operations by Virgin Nigeria as a flag carrier show that the Virgin Atlantic Group is not keen on developing its business in Nigeria. Virgin Nigeria probably has the most ageing fleet in the Virgin Group. I am not sure whether the airline has an aircraft that is less than 10 years old in its fleet.

Virgin Atlantic services the lucrative Lagos-London route with an Airbus 340 – the most modern commercial jetliner anyone can think of. Conversely, its Nigerian subsidiary and 'national flag carrier', Virgin Nigeria services the same route with an ageing Boeing 767. Virgin Atlantic lands at London's Heathrow Airport, the main gateway through which every Nigerian traveler wants to enter the United Kingdom. Virgin Nigeria on its part has been consigned to Gatwick from where it does the hard battle for the heart of passengers. Virgin Nigeria's ageing fleet is probably to blame for the airline's abysmal safety record.

On Wednesday, April 16, 2008, Nigeria narrowly escaped another air disaster as Virgin Nigeria Airways (VNA) Flight VK 823 bound for the Cameroonian commercial capital, Douala, made a successful emergency landing at the Port Harcourt International Airport after the Boeing 737-400 developed crippling mechanical problems mid-way into the flight. The cabin of the airliner was said to have been enveloped by smoke with passengers panicking over safety.

Some of the 139 passengers and crew on board the crippled airliner sustained injuries during the hot scramble to disembark after the thudded emergency landing. The safety record of Virgin Nigeria Airways has been a source of concern to every Nigerian air traveller even as the airline parades itself as the nation's flag carrier and claims to have the most modern aircraft in its fleet. In 2007, the National Assembly raised eyebrow over the airline's safety record. Following complaints about incessant air returns by aircraft in VNA's fleet, the managing director, Conrad Clifford, addressed the press on May 3, 2007 to allay mounting public fears about safety standard in the airline.

In the briefing, Clifford admitted that the airline recorded six air return incidents in the six months under review. Three of the incidents were engendered by landing gear retraction problem in three different aircraft in the airline's fleet. This is not a commendable safety record for an airline of VNA's status. Since last May when Clifford implicitly admitted the unenviable safety record of the airline, there obviously have been other incidents before the near disaster of April 16. Ironically, Virgin Atlantic, the parent company of VNA does not have such an appalling safety record. Is VNA's awful safety record a bye-product of the ubiquitous Nigerian factor? The answer to that question could only be provided by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the industry's watchdog.

Unfortunately, the agency has a penchant for defending errors by speaking from both sides of the mouth. One of the strategies of the NCAA is to keep air accident and incident reports as closely guarded secrets. The report of the incident on April 16 in Port Harcourt International Airport where Nigeria's high-flying female football team, the Super Falcons, missed death by the whiskers remains a litmus test for the NCAA. Every Nigerian wants to read details of the remote and immediate causes of the averted disaster. That is the only way we could get to the root of the frequent incidents involving aircraft in VNA's fleet.

The truth, however, is that by the very nature of its domineering foreign holdings and ageing fleet, Virgin Nigeria is neither Nigerian nor truly virgin as claimed by the airline's mischievous slogan. Somewhere along the line, someone would have to confront Richard Branson with this hard truth. By the time that is done, we would have initiated moves to save Nigeria from Virgin Nigeria.

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