Sometime in April 2021, Africa’s most rated airline, Ethiopian Airlines approached Air Peace to enter a deal that would allow it merge its operations with the local airline and pay millions of dollars monthly in royalty to its owner.
The negotiation took Allen Onyema, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace and his team to Addis Ababa to sign a Memorandum of Understanding. At the point, Onyema and his team did not have full understanding of the conditions of the contract.
Onyema told the story in a bid to link Ethiopian Airlines successful possession of 49 per cent of Nigerian Air without monetary contribution.
“What Ethiopia Airlines is doing now with the national carrier, they wanted to do it with me but for the love of country, I turned it down. April 10, 2019, in a letter, they came to me that they wanted Air Peace to corporate with them,” he said in an interview on Arise TV.
Onyema who is seemingly very proud of the successes of the Ethiopian Airlines, admitted that he wanted the deal when he was first approached.
Part of the deal according to the Air Peace boss was for Ethiopian Airlines to use his aircrafts to fly domestic routes.
He narrated, “They took us to Addis Ababa and we signed MOU and they said in the MOU that we need to push out gulf carriers and I said no problem. Mind you, I am very proud of what Ethiopia has achieved as an airline- as the pride of Africa. I like what they have achieved no doubt.
“We tried to collaborate, then when we got to the nitty-gritty of the meeting, what they wanted was to come into this place do local flights then use Air Peace to fly the whole world about 150 BASA and pay me royalty.”
He revealed that if he went ahead with the deal, he would have earned millions of dollars regularly as royalty.
According to him, he would not have to spend money to buy new aircrafts to keep benefiting from the deal.
“I would have been getting millions of dollars and one of them joked ‘Allen you don’t need to be buying planes again.’ And I asked, where does this leave my country?” Onyema said.
Onyema said he exited the deal because it would ruin the future of domestic airlines as well as make Ethiopian Airlines dominate the Nigerian Aviation industry.
He said, “In the letter I wrote to them, I asked where does this leave my nation Nigeria? It will destroy the jobs in Nigeria.
“It will kill the other airlines in Nigeria and Allen and Air Peace will be swimming in millions of dollars. So, we rejected it in a documented letter. It is in court today.”