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Starting Air Peace was to create jobs, not make money – Allen Onyema

Starting  Air Peace was to create jobs, not make money – Allen Onyema

The Chairman of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, speaks with TOFARATI IGE about his business and peace building activities

The airline business is believed to be very risky and cost intensive. What was your primary motivation for going into this line of business?

I didn’t know a thing about aviation before I went into it. The closest I got to involving myself in aviation was in 1998 when a group of people (who were aviators) came to me and asked us to pool resources together so we could buy a cargo plane. They told me that we would make a lot of money from the plane’s operations in the west coast of Africa. I sold some of my estates and brought my money to the table. But I never saw any plane and I swore never to get involved in any partnership with anybody in Nigeria ever again. It took me nine months to get my money back.

It was not until 2007 that someone told me again to go into it. I was involved in a lot of philanthropic activities, by giving money to people to start businesses. But they always came back to ask for more after they may have squandered the money or failed in the business they set out to do. I complained to a friend about it, and he advised me to provide jobs for people instead of giving them handouts. I enquired about the type of business I could do that could provide a lot of jobs and he suggested aviation; that one aircraft could provide about 1,000 jobs directly. He, however, warned me that it was not a lucrative business and is full of risks. I was initially scared because before then, I had never heard anything good about the aviation industry. I spoke with my wife and she was also scared about going into that line of business.

However, since the primary motive for everything we did was to help people, we decided to give it a try. I didn’t establish this business for pecuniary reasons, but to touch lives.

I then decided to educate myself more about aviation and as time went on, I became passionate about it. I got someone to put me through in the person of Gbolahan Abatan, an engineer, the owner of Air First. He was my consultant and we started making moves towards bringing the business to life. In 2009, I applied for an air transport licence.

You once mentioned that it was tedious getting your operational licences. Did you at any point feel like giving up?

Yes, I felt like giving up at some point. The story of Air Peace is not something that can be told in this interview alone; maybe a book has to be written about it. Air Peace is God’s project and I’m only being used by Him to run it. I front for God Almighty in this business.

If you know the kind of things that happened here, you will see that God’s hands are all over us here. Besides, I have never done anything that failed. I have always excelled in everything I set out to do.

After getting the air transport licence, I didn’t even know that I needed an air operator’s certificate; that should tell you how naïve I was. I give thanks to Engr Gbolahan because he was the one that was brushing me up. Even though we later fell out, I still give him credit for laying the foundation for me.

It took us almost two years to get the AOC. I was almost frustrated out because there were other people who applied almost at the same time or even after me that got their AOC before me. Some people even played the ethnic card against me, and told me that I was finding it difficult because I am Igbo. But I chased those people away because I don’t believe in those things. I am the national chairman of the Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria; so, I have always worked for the good and progress of this country selflessly. I don’t discriminate against anybody irrespective of their tribe and I wasn’t expecting to be discriminated against.

Meanwhile, by this time, I had acquired seven aircraft and the other people (who applied for the licence) had barely bought three. I had hired a British maintenance organisation to maintain our aircraft, with several other proofs that we were ready for business. I had also employed about 250 Nigerians before even starting off and I was paying them salaries. It was as if I was being primed to fail. At times, some of our staff members would cry about the situation.

One night, while crying, I decided to shut down the business. I discussed with my wife and we felt we were not wanted. There were so many African countries that had been contacting me to set up in their countries but I didn’t want to take the jobs meant for Nigerians outside.

That night, I called our human resources manager and told her to assemble all the staff at the office the next day because we were going to shut down. I planned to pay everybody off. I then called someone at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and told them of my intention to shut down.

By the time I got to the office the next morning, the then acting Director-General of the NCAA, Engr. Ben Adeleke, was there with other top officials of the organisation. Someone had alerted him of my intention. He was very angry and disturbed because he felt there were people within his organisation that were trying to prevent us from getting the AOC. He placed a curse on the people who were working against the successful take-off of Air Peace.

Even after the commencement of operations of the airline, there have been several things that have happened but I swore two weeks ago that this airline has come to stay, no matter what anybody does. By the grace of God, Air Peace will outlive my generation and several others after it.

As the Chairman of Air Peace, what are your duties?

The management reports to me and I oversee every aspect of the company. I usually have meetings with top officials of the organisation and they brief me on things that are going on in the company. Basically, I am at the apex of policymaking in the company.

What are the toughest decisions you’ve taken as chairman of the company?

You may not believe it but the toughest decision I’ve had to take is having to approve the termination of anyone’s employment. Before we terminate your employment in this company, you must have been involved in fraud. We have zero tolerance for fraud and anything that can breach safety.

What are the major differences between running an airline and other businesses?

The aviation industry is highly regulated and sometimes, those regulations don’t help business. Other businesses that I’ve been involved in are not as regulated. The aviation business does not forgive any mistake because it can be costly. It is also very capital intensive with the slightest of margins as profit. The length of time it takes for you to break even in aviation is miles apart, when compared with other businesses. You should not expect to make profits in your first five years of operation. And you have to be very financially prudent.

Since I went into aviation, all my fixed-deposit (accounts) have been depleted. That was why Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group) said that if a billionaire wants to become a millionaire, he should go into aviation. It is a business that helps every other person in the society but the owner. However, it is also addictive. You wouldn’t want to leave it but it would be affecting your other businesses.

How would you describe the relationship between the company and industry regulators?

The relationship between us and NCAA is normal. I must confess that they are doing a very good job; on the side of safety. I am not saying that there haven’t been times that the relationship between us went frosty, but that is to be expected. I am also not saying that there are people in NCAA who may want to be funny at times.

However, I will score them 95 per cent. They have a fantastic man in their DG, Captain Muhtar Usman. He is someone you can call at any time and he would give you a listening ear. He tries to make sure that he supports the airlines. But there are people within his fold who do not understand his vision of how things should run.

Operators in the aviation industry have often complained about the price instability of aviation fuel and how it impacts their business. What has been your experience in that regard?

A lot of people say that Nigerian airlines are weak but we deserve to be commended. Those who have taken the risk to have investments in aviation should be applauded, instead of the badmouthing we often get.

All over the world, it is said that aviation fuel takes 40 per cent of your operational cost. But in Nigeria, it takes about 70 per cent. This is despite the fact that we produce crude oil. The price of the fuel changes at will. I think the solution is for us to produce aviation fuel locally.

Considering that airlines don’t usually make profit until their sixth year. How have you been able to maintain fiscal prudence such that you don’t run into troubled waters since Air Peace is not even five-year-old yet?

We have to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us. If you bring a foreigner here to run an airline, they wouldn’t get it right. That’s because the foreigner isn’t used to buying diesel to power generators to run offices and warehouses. The spare parts of aircraft have to be kept in air conditioned warehouses, yet we don’t have stable power supply. You can imagine the type of costs that we incur.

If you go to airports in developed countries of the world, they are well run and airlines strictly face airline business. But here in Nigeria, we have to run after people such as the ground handlers and other stakeholders.

In Air Peace, I do not launder money or plough proceeds from the company into other businesses. We make sure that we return what we borrowed from the banks as at when due and that gives them confidence to lend us more. All the banks in the country want to work with us because of my integrity. They have been following our progress and they know that very soon, we will start breaking even. We do not borrow what we don’t need. Sometimes, the banks even release money to us but we tell them to keep it until when we know we really need it. Our safety records precede us and Air Peace is respected worldwide.

You recently took delivery of some new aircraft. Are you looking to expand to international routes?

I thank the Federal Government for giving us the rights to fly to Johannesburg (South Africa), Mumbai (India), Guangzhou (China), Atlanta and Houston (USA), Heathrow (UK), Dubai (UAE), among others. We have started doing our African regional flights to Banjul (The Gambia), Monrovia (Liberia), Freetown and Darkar (Senegal). Within the next one month, we will add some other African countries. We are taking it step by step.

We recently took delivery of four Boeing 777 aircraft and ten Boeing 737 Max; which is one of Boeing’s latest inventions. Africa should be proud of us for being among the first to buy those new aircraft.

Before starting international operations, we want to get it right. We don’t want to join the fray like others did and burn our fingers. We want to make sure that our aircraft belong wholly to us instead of leasing them. Our business plan says that in our fourth or fifth year, we would go international; and that is the blueprint we are following. We will start with Dubai in December.

Apart from getting the rights to fly to those countries, those countries also have to give us the permission to fly into their countries. And that is where we need our government because those countries would want to protect their airlines and stifle foreign competition. The government should not allow any of its officials to de-market any Nigerian investment. It doesn’t give the outside world any encouragement to do business with us. Rather, they should be promoting Nigerian investments.

What are your thoughts on the suspension of Nigeria Air?

They said the reason for the creation of Air Nigeria in the first place is because there is a gap in the industry and indigenous airlines are not getting it right, but we are starting to get it right. Some national airlines are not bigger than Air Peace. We have decided to plug that hole. Another pertinent question to ask is, why are the indigenous airlines failing? If certain things can be put in place, the Nigerian airlines wouldn’t fail. When the government realised that Nigerian airlines have started showing strength, they decided to suspend the Air Nigeria project. I applaud them for that because it is a moribund idea. Countries are running away from having national carriers and we wanted to go into it.

I salute President Muhammadu Buhari for retracing his steps on the project. It shows that he does not care about political correctness, but about the future wellbeing of the country. The Air Nigeria project would have bled the country to stupor if continued. The project would have killed domestic airlines, and it would, itself, die in four years. It was just like taking the aviation industry 20 years backwards.

Some foreign vendors even stopped doing business with Nigerian airlines because of the Air Nigeria project. They believed that a government airline would deliberately frustrate the local airlines in order for them to succeed. The MD of one of the AMCON-controlled airlines said they faced the same challenge.

We don’t need national carriers; rather, we are better off with flag carriers. National carriers such as Etihad, Air India, South Africa, and others, have been looking for investors for a while but no one is willing to buy them. Government has no business doing business.

You mentioned that the need to create jobs was one of the motivating factors for the establishment of Air Peace. Can you give us a picture of how many jobs have been created in its years of existence?

There are over 3,000 people working directly with Air Peace. And we support millions more indirectly. For example, we are NAHCO’s biggest customer in Nigeria. NAHCO has over 80,000 shareholders, so this means that my business is sustaining those 80,000 people. The people supplying catering to us are also beneficiaries because they have been able to create jobs based on our patronage.

Apart from moving people from one place to another, we are energisng the society and we need to be protected.

Airlines in Nigeria usually have issues of delayed and cancelled flights without proper information disseminated to their customers. How is Air Peace different in this regard?

Delayed flights are caused by a variety of factors and I will state them here. One of them is poor airport infrastructure. Some of our airports look like poultries. Some airports don’t even have runway lights; this means that aircraft can’t operate in those airports beyond 6pm.

Ninety-nine per cent of our flights originate from Lagos before going to other places. These flights from Lagos generate about a thousand passengers but our terminal at the airport is too small to accommodate this number conveniently. That is why the crowd at airports is usually chaotic. There is only one security scanner and that often causes delays. Meanwhile, the pilots are already seated in the cockpit of the plane waiting for passengers. The boarding process is often extended because of these inadequacies and this affects other flights for the rest of the day because the situation is repeated at other airports across the country.

You also cannot rule out the fact that airlines have some incompetent staff and that causes delay. I’ve seen a situation where a boarding officer didn’t know that the plane was already on the ground for passengers to start boarding. He was still waiting for the aircraft to land.

Weather conditions also contribute to flight delays as we cannot fly in bad weather. There is also the issue of the attitude of passengers and government agencies; poor Internet facilities, aircraft damage, movement of VIPs and other factors.

There have been insinuations that Air Peace is owned by either Patience Jonathan, Stella Oduah or Kingsley Kuku. What’s the true story behind the ownership of the airline?

The Pull Him Down syndrome is the biggest industry now in Nigeria. People can say whatever they like because they have freedom of speech but that freedom can also land them in trouble. If they say such things in certain places, I can sue them to court. Nigerians are beginning to behave as if to be successful is a crime.

I have never met or spoken with former President Goodluck Jonathan or his wife, Patience. How did a woman that acquired the nickname of ‘Mama Peace’ just recently be behind my business, considering that I’ve been involved in peace building all my life. Most of my businesses have peace in their names.

Some people also said the company is owned by Stella Oduah because we are both from Anambra State. I met Stella for the first time in 2017 inside my aircraft going to Owerri. Usually, when I’m flying on any of our aircraft, I make it a point of duty to greet all the passengers on board to thank them for patronising us. It was on one of such flights that I met Stella Oduah for the first time.

You trained as a lawyer. What stirred your interest in business?

My father was a lawyer and I am a very adventurous person. I also like issues of peace. From a young age, I started peace building without even knowing what I was doing. At the age of eight, I witnessed my father and his elder brother fought and I didn’t like it. They were not on talking terms for over a year but I tried to settle their differences by going to my uncle’s house.

As a student of the University of Ibadan, I founded the Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria. Then, it was known as the Commission for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria. I used it to promote broad nationalism in Nigeria, as against sectionalism. We have so many ethnic nationalities in the country and that should be a source of strength for us. I prefer a big, strong Nigeria to a balkanised country.

I used to invite elder statesmen for different conferences and summits. It was in the course of that I did the first Nigeria Forever project. I went to the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo then and I showed them my proposal. They promised to support me but they never really did at the end of the day. The project took me to the 36 states of the federation with thousands of my followers who believed in what I was doing. I did all these with my own money because it was something I believed in.

All the first-class emirs in the country knew me then because I was moving people in their thousands for peace building. When I finished one of such programmes in Sokoto, the then Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, hosted me and my entourage in his palace. Former President Shehu Shagari, who was part of the sultanate council, saw me and said I was doing a fantastic job for the nation. He invited me to his home and I spent a day with him along with my large entourage. Shagari told me that the government might not support me but that my activities would help to change the country. What he said really encouraged me.

How did you get involved with peace building in the Niger Delta?

I grew up in Warri, Delta State. I was really passionate about stopping insurgency in the Niger Delta. I felt bad that businesses were leaving the Niger Delta and it was affecting the economy of the country.

The military were not making any headway in the fight against insurgency because the militants knew the terrain better than them. I believed that if we took non-violence education to the creeks, it would have a lasting impact. I remembered that people, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King used non-violence to cause lasting change in their different communities. I then got in touch with an aide of Martin Luther King, Dr Bernard Lafayette, who trained me and some of my aides in non-violence. After that, we started training militants and we were able to convert many of them to our cause. Oil companies such as Shell and Chevron noticed the success we were recording and they started sending militants to us for training. They paid us millions of naira for this training.

When former President Umaru Yar’Adua declared amnesty for militants, we were also involved in training and rehabilitating many ex-militants.

What was your first breakthrough in business?

I started working as a lawyer in 1990. My parents wanted me to stay back in Warri and work for Shell but I rebelled against them because I wanted to be independent.

I went from one office to the other looking for a law office to practise in. then I met Chief Vincent Nwizigbo, who was one of the foremost lawyers at the time. He invited me to work in his chambers for free in the hope of getting me employed later.

I started going there. One day, they sent me to court to file an adjournment on a case they expected to lose. But through a loophole I noticed in the court process, I was able to get the case struck out. He then employed me and placed me on a salary of N500.

Meanwhile, I had a friend who was a real estate agent and I followed him to Alagbado, Lagos, where he wanted to sell some land for N5,000. I was able to sell about six plots of the land on my own for N10,000 apiece, which meant that I made about N5,000 on each of the plots of land.

Then, the family that owned the land called for me and said they wanted me to be selling the land for them. I was successful at doing that and I made a lot of money in the process. I also bought property in Lekki and other places on the Island in Lagos. I made my first million naira before I was 25-year-old.

Considering that you started making money early, how easy was it for you to get married before the age of 27?

I met my wife in Abuja and I loved the way she was dressed. She was undergoing the National Youth Service Corps programme at the Corporate Affairs Commission in Abuja then. She didn’t initially give me attention but I told her I wanted to marry her. Around that time, my mum had also been telling me to settle down because she knew I was making a lot of money and living in hotels in Lagos.

I then took my girlfriend to my sister’s wedding and that was the only time she met my mother because she (my mother) died soon after. When I told my mother that I wanted to marry a Hausa lady; she told me to go ahead if I was sure I loved her. Because of my mum’s death, I decided to quicken marriage and I have had no cause to regret. Inter-ethnic marriage is one thing that can bring this country together.

What are some of your fondest childhood memories?

I recall playing football with my friends and performing on stage. At a time, I also danced for a local medicine man out of adventure.

How do you relax?

I don’t have a social life anymore. My life begins and ends every day with the airline. I haven’t had any vacation in the last five years. I don’t drink; so, the only time I relax is when I’m with friends. I also have a table tennis board and I often indulge in the game with my staff members.

My best way of relaxation is by helping people.

How do you like to dress?

I like to dress simply. As a lawyer, we were told to be wearing suits but I don’t really like that. I prefer wearing blazers and kaftan. On weekends, I put on jeans and tee shirts.

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