Former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode has challenged the account of Nigeria Airways’ collapse presented by the incumbent Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, insisting that decades of mismanagement and debt had crippled the national carrier before former President Olusegun Obasanjo returned to power in 1999.
Fani-Kayode’s intervention followed Keyamo’s accusation that former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar was being hypocritical by criticising President Bola Tinubu over economic hardship while failing to address the unpaid pensions and gratuities of former Nigeria Airways workers during the administration in which he served.
The exchange began after Atiku blamed Tinubu for the rising cost of living and insecurity, promising to make life more affordable if elected president in 2027.
In a post on X, Atiku said parents were going to bed worried about feeding their children, while pensioners had to choose between buying food and medicine.
He also lamented that transport fares, rent and other basic expenses were consuming the earnings of young workers, while families across the country lived in fear of kidnappings and attacks.
“No family should have to face hunger and insecurity at the same time,” Atiku said, warning that Nigerians could not allow the hardship and fear to become the future inherited by their children.
He urged registered voters to collect their Permanent Voter Cards, describing them as “your voice, your choice and your peaceful power to demand change”.
“Bola made life expensive. I will work to make life affordable again and restore the security every Nigerian deserves,” the former vice-president said.
Responding on Wednesday, Keyamo accused Atiku of hypocrisy, arguing that the government in which he served as vice-president liquidated Nigeria Airways in September 2004, leaving thousands of workers jobless and their pensions and gratuities unpaid.
“Your Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, this is hypocrisy at its peak! Let me just talk only about the sector that I head, Aviation,” Keyamo wrote.
The minister said the outstanding entitlements amounted to billions of naira and that many former employees had died after years of frustration while waiting for their benefits.
He disclosed that Tinubu had approved and released ₦36bn more than a month earlier to settle the outstanding payments, adding that beneficiaries had begun receiving payment alerts.
Keyamo said the President had also received an award from the workers’ union in recognition of the intervention.
“Twenty-two years later, after many of them have died out of frustration, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is now clearing the mess you left behind,” he wrote.
He accused Atiku of taking credit for the achievements of the Obasanjo administration when convenient while distancing himself from controversial decisions taken during the same period.
“When it is convenient for you, you claim some credit for the Obasanjo-Atiku government, and when not convenient, you say Obasanjo was in charge and not you as Vice-President,” Keyamo said.
“The proper posturing of a con artist!” he added.
However, Fani-Kayode, who served as aviation minister in 2006 after previously holding the culture and tourism portfolio, said the airline’s collapse could not fairly be blamed on Obasanjo, arguing that its decline had begun long before the former president’s return to office.
“In fairness to President Obasanjo, the Nigeria Airways ‘mess’, as you have described it, was established before he came back to power in 1999. And it was indeed a mess but it was not of Obasanjo’s making,” Fani-Kayode wrote on Thursday.
He said Nigeria Airways had 32 functional aircraft, excellent pilots and crew, a strong management team and an accountable board when Obasanjo left office as military head of state in 1979.
According to him, the airline was then regarded as a source of national pride, but by the time Obasanjo returned to power 20 years later, only one aircraft remained, and it was not operational.
“The rest had vanished together with virtually all of the company’s assets,” he said, adding that the airline had accumulated substantial debts.
Fani-Kayode attributed the decline to corruption, mismanagement and operational failures by successive management teams and boards between 1979 and 1999.
He said efforts to rescue the airline had failed, including privatisation advice from the International Finance Corporation, which later withdrew from the process.
According to him, the formal winding-up process was completed in 2004 after years of financial and operational decline.
He maintained that the Obasanjo administration had little choice but to liquidate the carrier rather than commit additional public funds to repeated bailouts.
“The 2004 liquidation was the endpoint of long-term structural failure driven by mismanagement, debt and operational collapse,” he said, adding that the decision was painful because of the role Obasanjo had played in the airline’s development during his military administration.
Fani-Kayode said the question of unpaid pensions remained after the liquidation and that he had attempted to secure payment when he became aviation minister in 2006.
He explained that a committee chaired by the then Head of Service, Yayale Ahmed, had recommended the release of funds to pay the former workers.
Following the recommendation, Fani-Kayode said he presented a memorandum to the Federal Executive Council seeking approval for the payments and strongly argued that the pensioners deserved to be paid.
However, he said the proposal was rejected after some members of the cabinet opposed it because of their anger towards the airline’s former management teams and boards, whom they blamed for its collapse.
He said he disagreed with the position that all former employees should be denied their pensions because of the mismanagement that led to the airline’s demise.
“I did not share that view, but sadly I and those who supported me were in a minority, and we lost the debate,” he said.
Fani-Kayode said the matter was revisited under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose administration paid most of the pensioners, while the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari continued the payments.
He commended Keyamo for settling the remaining entitlements under Tinubu’s administration, saying he wished the payments had been made during his own time in office.
“The pensioners suffered immensely over the years. I have always maintained that paying them was the right thing to do,” he said.
On Atiku’s role in the Federal Executive Council debate over the pension payments, Fani-Kayode said he knew which side the former vice-president had supported but declined to disclose it publicly.
“As for His Excellency Waziri Atiku, I know which side of the divide he was during that debate in council, but I will not share that publicly because whatever decision was finally taken was a collective one,” he wrote.
He added that members of the administration shared responsibility for the decision and its consequences.
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