Nigeria To Sign Direct Flight Agreement With Algeria- Aviation Minister

In strengthening Civil Aviation Industry in Nigeria and connect Nigeria with the African continent, the Federal Government is set to finalize arrangements to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Algeria for a direct flight route between the two countries in a few months to come.

Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo stated this when he received a delegation from Algeria led by the Algerian Ambassador to Nigeria Mr. Hocine Latli, in his office.

Keyamo said “Nigeria had a Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) with Algeria for decades. However, we have not been taking advantage of the agreement, and the agreement actually specifies the routes between Algeria and Nigeria.”

He explained that the Algeria delegation in the past weeks has reached out to Nigeria for the re-opening of the route between Algiers and Lagos to revive the BASA that haven’t been taken advantage of over the years.

“Today, they are here with a memorandum of understanding specifically, although in the spirit of opening up the sky in Africa, they want to add Abuja to their route and also give us the second largest city in Algeria, that is Oran, in place of reciprocity for us to fly with our Local airline.

 “We have insisted that for those who come to us for such an agreement, as one of the focal points of this administration is to protect our Local airline operators; protect their business, and to promote their business. We raised the case of reciprocity for our local operators which they have gladly acceded to.

“As a government, we are going to quickly look at this MoU from the face of it we have no serious objection to it but we have a normal bureaucratic process that has to pass through as quickly as possible.”

Keyamo further stated that Nigeria is going to fix a day either here in the country (Nigeria) or international forum for the signing, saying that Nigeria is very happy to have Air Algeria back on the soil.

“We want competition, also we want the price of air tickets to go down for the benefit of Nigeria, this is a symbiotic relationship; it is beneficial to Algeria and beneficial to Nigeria.”

While reacting, Algerian Ambassador to Nigeria, Hocine Latli, who led the delegation said, “you can’t have a tied partnership if you do not have a direct flight between the two countries saying that they are trying to solve the problem of direct flight and restart the dynamic partnership and cooperation between the two countries in the next few months.”

 “It is important that we have reached a common point that the Nigerian government has accepted the opening of direct flight from Algiers to Nigeria”.