UAE’s giant carrier, the Emirates Airlines has suspended flight operations to Nigeria indefinitely over the airline’s trapped funds in the country.
Emirates announced this in a statement issued on Friday, saying the flights’ suspension to and from Nigeria is inevitable.
The statement said: “Emirates has continued to actively seek a solution for the repatriation of the remainder of its blocked funds in Nigeria.
“We were encouraged by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s efforts of reviewing our request and considered that this critical issue would be swiftly resolved with the subsequent clearance of our remaining funds.
“However, Emirates has yet to receive an allocation of our blocked funds to be repatriated.
“Without the timely repatriation of the funds and a mechanism in place to ensure that future repatriation of Emirates’ funds do not accumulate in any way, the backlog will continue to grow, and we simply cannot meet our operational costs nor maintain the commercial viability of our operations in Nigeria.”
The airline explained that it had officially communicated its position and attended multiple hearings with the Nigerian government, and had made its proposed approach clear to, “alleviate this untenable situation, including a plan for the progressive release of our funds.”
This it stated included the repatriation and receipt of at least 80 per cent of its remaining blocked funds by the end of October 2022, in addition to providing a guaranteed mechanism to avoid future repatriation accumulation challenges and delays.
“We hope to reach a mutual resolution with the Nigerian government around the repatriation of blocked funds to enable the resumption of operations and connectivity for travellers and businesses,” the airline said.
The airline had earlier announced that it would suspend its operations from October 29, 2022, over the failure of the government to make dollars available to the foreign carriers to repatriate their revenue.
Emirates operated twice daily to Lagos and once daily to Abuja, recording 21 flights every week with high load factor.
An attempt to book flight from its portal between Dubai and Abuja or Lagos, however, failed because the airline did not indicate that it still operates to those destinations.
It also kept mum after that initial announcement during aviation stakeholders meeting in Abuja.
Recently, UAE stopped issuing visa to Nigeria and 19 other African countries, announcing that the airlines trapped funds in Nigeria had risen to $700 million. Read more.
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