Air Peace Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Allen Onyema, says the Nigerian airline business will collapse within months over the new tax reforms being undertaken by the President Bola Tinubu administration.
Onyema said the new tax laws have brought back charges that the 2020 tax laws removed.
Speaking in an interview with Arise News on Sunday, Onyema said the taxes include customs duties on imported aircraft, aircraft parts, and engines, as well as VAT on tickets.
He said they will further burden airlines with additional costs.
“There is VAT now on the importation of aircraft. So if you buy an aircraft of $80 million, you are supposed to pay 7.5 percent of $80 million,” he said.
“Do the mathematics. From money borrowed from the bank, interest rates are 30 to 35 percent. So you bring in spare parts, you pay 7.5 percent on your spare parts.”
The Air Peace CEO said the airline industry cannot withstand additional burdens under the new tax laws.
“If we implement that tax reform, Nigerian airlines will go down in three months,” he said.
Onyema revealed Nigerian airlines have decided to stop tolerating unruly passengers from 2026.
“What Nigerian airlines will not do in Cotonou, they do it here, and it’s unfortunate,” he said.
“If you saw some people that went on aircraft from London, would they go into British Airways and perform such acts?
“They promoted themselves to business class when they paid for economy. They brought out three bottles of rum they bought from the duty-free, drank them, and started threatening everybody on the aircraft.
“When we got here, a senator, somebody called me and said, ‘Those guys, if you don’t release them.’ I said, I’m not even keeping them. The law is keeping them. Let them answer. We’ve got to blacklist them.
“At the same time, our aircraft couldn’t land in Gatwick because of bad weather. It detoured and landed in Manchester, waiting for the weather to clear.
“Nigerians went to the business class going back and did a video that Air Peace did that… trying to demonise the airline.
“But at the end of the day, the British authorities came out to say that on that day in question, over 200 flights were diverted.
“I want to say something. We, airlines, have started to do something from January 1. We are no longer going to condone unruly passenger behaviour because we believe that they’re being supported by the system unnecessarily.”
On December 10, the senate summoned Festus Keyamo, the minister of aviation, and key industry stakeholders for an urgent meeting over the sharp rise in domestic airfares.
The house of representatives on December 11 asked the federal government to cut aviation taxes by 50 percent to curb soaring airfares.
