EFCC petitioned to Investigate Nigerian air, fraud by outgoing minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika-WDNews247.

  EFCC petitioned to Investigate Nigerian air, fraud by outgoing minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika-WDNews247. A petition to investigate form...

 EFCC petitioned to Investigate Nigerian air, fraud by outgoing minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika-WDNews247.

A petition to investigate former aviation minister Hadi Sirika for allegedly leveraging the creation of a national airline, Nigeria Air, to commit fraud and economic sabotage against the nation has been received by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The petition was signed by Mark Adebayo, the executive director of a civic organization called Secure World and Liberty Initiative for Peace, and it was addressed to the chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa.

According to the group, the outgoing minister displayed "impunity in the unveiling of an aircraft on Friday in Abuja purportedly belonging to Nigeria Air, despite an existing court order restraining the minister from taking any action regarding the project."

The petitioners claimed that the minister imported a repainted Ethiopian Airlines aircraft and misrepresented it as the inaugural flight of Nigeria Air in an effort to deceive President Muhammadu Buhari's administration and the majority of Nigerians.

The civil society organization claimed that the Federal High Court in Lagos, presided over by Justice A.L. Allagoa, had issued three orders of injunctions preventing the Federal Government from acting on the Nigeria Air project. "But the minister in a desperate attempt to cover up the monumental fraud in the deal elected to flagrantly disobey an order of a court of competent jurisdiction and produced a shah," the civil society group claimed.

According to the petition seen by SaharaReporters, the group felt compelled to let you know that the plane that Minister Sirika allegedly unveiled as the first flight of Nigeria Air on Friday, May 26, 2023, is still in use by Ethiopian Airlines.According to a review of the flight radar, we can establish that the plane, a Boeing 737-800 with the registration number ET-APL, has since left the nation this weekend for Turkey; it only passed through Nigeria for the farcical performance put on by the minister. Nigeria Air lacks an air operator certificate since a flight with an Ethiopia Airlines registration number landed in the nation. 

No aircraft can be registered in Nigeria without the carrier holding an AOC, indicating that neither the leased nor owned aircraft belong to Nigeria Air. Therefore, Nigerians shouldn't be duped by Sirika.

They requested that the anti-graft agency order departing Minister Sirika to account for the staggering N15.9 billion that the federal government had already committed to the project, alleging that the minister's desperation was intended to hide the massive fraud and misappropriation of funds.

The unveiling represented a last-ditch effort to defend the N15.9 billion federal government has earmarked for Nigeria Air since 2016. The phantom project has continued to eat up budgetary funds; in the 2023 budget, N1.3 billion was allocated to it along with an additional N700 million as "working capital" and N200 million as consulting fees. As a result, the minister cannot deceive Nigerians by bringing in a rented aircraft and passing it off as a step toward the start of the airline's operations in the days before he leaves office. We cannot allow this deception and economic terrorism to go unpunished. 

We are confident that the EFCC would investigate this scam thoroughly and promptly in order to prevent the approaching collapse of Nigeria's aviation industry, the petition stated.