November 08, (THEWILL) – Nigeria and Algeria have finalised arrangements to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a direct flight route between the two countries.
Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, disclosed this when he received a delegation from Algeria led by Hocine Latli, the Algerian Ambassador to Nigeria, in his office.
According to the Ministry’s Head of Press, Odutayo Oluseyi, Keyamo said, “Although Nigeria has always had a Bilateral Air Service Agreement with Algeria (BASA) for decades, we haven’t been taking advantage of the agreement. That agreement actually specifies the routes between Algiers and Lagos.
“Today, they are here with a memorandum of understanding specifying, 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 in place of reciprocity for us to fly with our local airline and that city is Oran.
“We have insisted that for those who come to us for such an agreement, 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.
“We are going to fix a day either here in Nigeria or international forum for the signing. We are very happy to have Air Algeria back on the soil of Nigeria. We want competition, 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.”
On his part, Ambassador Latli, said, “You can’t have a tied partnership if you do not have a direct flight between the two countries. Today, we are trying to solve this problem of direct flight and restart the dynamic partnership and cooperation between the two countries, especially in the next few months.
“So, it is important today that we have reached a common point that the Honourable Minister of Aviation and Aerospace has accepted the opening of direct flights from Algiers to Nigeria.”
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