Air Peace, Festus Keyamo and the Sad Reality of Nigeria’s Aviation Sector
By Mohammed Dahiru Aminu
The frustration and anger I feel towards Air Peace is overwhelming. The airline’s constant disregard for its customers and audacity in offering solutions that, in essence, put more financial burden on those it has already wronged, makes me question why it is allowed to operate at all. The situation becomes even more infuriating when one considers the role of Nigeria’s Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, who seems oblivious to the glaring issues within the country’s aviation sector. It feels as though both Air Peace and the government are working in tandem, not to improve the system, but to continually frustrate passengers, leaving them with little to no recourse for the mess they create.
A perfect example of this was my recent experience with Air Peace. I had a scheduled flight to Asaba, which it cancelled at the last minute, without providing a valid reason. Instead of promptly offering a genuine resolution, the airline sent me an email offering to reroute or reschedule the flight at no additional cost. It sounded fair at first, but upon requesting a new flight, they had the audacity to ask for more money! It was almost laughable, but this is the reality that Nigerian travelers deal with daily. I reminded Air Peace of its earlier promise, insisting that I shouldn’t be charged extra for rescheduling, as it was its fault in the first place. In response, the airline reluctantly offered me a flight on Sunday – a full three days later – provided I refused to pay the extra fee. In what world is it acceptable to offer a flight three days after the scheduled date and expect the customer to be satisfied? I had urgent matters to attend to in Asaba, and they wanted me to wait until Sunday!
When I finally decided that I couldn’t wait for its arbitrary flight offers, I requested a refund, only to be told that I would need to wait 21 working days to get my money back. Twenty-one working days?!! The audacity of this airline to take people’s money, fail to provide the service paid for, and then expect them to wait almost a month to receive a refund is mind-boggling. If I didn’t want to wait that long, I was given the option to “expedite” the refund within 48 hours – at a cost, of course. In my case, I was told to pay N57,600 to expedite the refund for both myself and another passenger. It was clear to me that this entire scenario was not just an unfortunate incident, but a well-rehearsed scam designed to squeeze more money from already frustrated passengers.
Air Peace has gained notoriety for such antics. It cancels flights at the last minute, takes people’s money, and then offers empty promises of rescheduling their flights or rerouting them, without any intention of actually making things right. What’s worse is that even when it claims that you can reroute at no additional cost, it is almost guaranteed that it will come up with some excuse to demand more money from you. And if you’re foolish enough to agree to its terms, what’s the guarantee that it won’t cancel the new flight too? Air Peace is, quite frankly, a disgrace. It offers passengers the option to upgrade to business class; but that, too, is a gamble. Why should anyone believe that the airline won’t cancel a business class flight, just like it did the economy class one? The sheer disrespect to passengers is alarming.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, when you finally ask for your money back, it will delay the process as much as it can. Twenty-one working days is an absurd amount of time to wait for a refund, especially when the airline was so quick to receive payment in the first instance. And yet, if you want it faster, it is more than happy to extort you for this. This isn’t just incompetence. This is robbery. Air Peace is nothing more than a predatory company taking advantage of the lax regulatory environment in Nigeria’s aviation sector. It thrives on making the lives of Nigerians more miserable, while pocketing our hard-earned money.
I am still waiting to see if it will honour its promise to refund my money within 48 hours, after paying the expedited refund fee. But based on the stories I’ve heard from other passengers, I have little hope, even for this. Many have told me that Air Peace rarely refunds the full amount it owes, and it always has some excuse ready in terms of why it can’t pay it all back. I’m beginning to realise that I may be one of its latest victims, in a long line of passengers it has dealt with unfairly.
But let’s not forget that the real issue here isn’t just Air Peace, it is also the Nigerian government’s blatant failure to regulate and monitor the aviation industry. If Air Peace were operating in a properly regulated environment, it would have been shut down a long time ago. Its level of unprofessionalism and blatant disregard for its customers would never be tolerated in any serious country. But in Nigeria, it continues to operate with impunity, because the government is either too incompetent to do anything about it, or, worse, it is complicit.
Take our current Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, for example. He was recently captured in a video arguing that Nigeria cannot allow a foreign airline to operate its national carrier because, in his words, Nigeria is “bigger” and “more ambitious” than Togo. The sheer absurdity of this statement is enough to make anyone’s blood boil. How can you claim that Nigeria is more ambitious than Togo when our aviation sector is in complete shambles? There’s nothing ambitious about having an airline like Air Peace dominate our domestic routes, cancelling flights at will, and treating passengers like garbage. Keyamo’s arrogance and delusions of grandeur are exactly why the Nigerian aviation sector remains so backward. Our leaders refuse to confront the reality of their failures, choosing instead to make injudicious comparisons with other African nations, in a vain attempt to pamper their egos.
Perhaps if I had been on Air Peace’s London flight, I might have received better treatment. It seems Air Peace and its Aviation Minister patron are only concerned about flights to more prestigious destinations like London. Domestic flight passengers? We’re just afterthoughts. But this is what happens when a country’s leadership is out of touch with the needs of its people. Festus Keyamo and Air Peace are two sides of the same coin, united in their incompetence and arrogance, while ordinary Nigerians suffer in silence. It’s high time we, the people, demand better. Enough is enough.
Mohammed Dahiru Aminu ([email protected]) wrote from Abuja, Nigeria.
