A Call On CBN To Investigate Exploitative Foreign Airlines And Their Banks

Not a few Nigerians, including my good self, heaved a sigh of relief when the Central Bank of Nigeria announced that it had cleared the more than $7bn backlog of unpaid foreign exchange commitments to businesses and banks. The clearance was a sure sign of how serious the federal government is about redeeming the strength and glory of the Naira relative to the dollar and other international currencies.

Nonetheless, since then, foreign airline operators have sustained a strident denial of the clearance as they insisted that they had not received their own foreign exchange claims of about $700million from the CBN.

Truth be told, the manner of engagement of the foreign airlines with their Nigerian public is abysmal and smacks of blackmail. I recall that it is on account of this forex backlog that the foreign airline operators deliberately locked out Nigerians from accessing all categories of cheap tickets and, thereby, making foreign travels excruciating experiences for travellers.

Meanwhile, it is becoming apparent that the airline operators have not been upfront with the whole truth about the clearance of the forex backlogs with the Nigerian people. Reports suggest that the backlogs had been cleared to a remnant of $29million which had also been reportedly cleared through respective banks of the airlines.

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I believe it is hightime this deliberate and wicked exploitation of the Nigerian people by the airline operators stopped. We should not be made to suffer for the operational deficiencies of the banks.

And to immediately assuage the growing tension between the airline operators and the CBN, I request the Governor of CBN and His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to intervene by ordering a thorough investigation of the banks through which the foreign airlines’ forex were purportedly cleared.

The airlines must also be investigated for economic sabotage with intent at underminng the value of Nigeria’s foreign reserves through exorbitant pricing of their tickets. Appropriate sanctions must also be applied to serve notice on would be exploiters that Nigeria, under President Tinubu, means business.

Nze Chidi Duru, OON, is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder/Chairman, Grand Towers Limited