Nigeria’s Senate has closed the door on reviving Nigeria Air, the flag carrier project of the Buhari administration that collapsed amid fraud allegations and a 2024 court ruling voiding its Ethiopian Airlines sale arrangement. Considering a motion on enforcing the Bilateral Air Services Agreement with China on Tuesday, senators rejected an additional proposal by Senator Ned Nwoko to revive a national airline on the old model. Senate President Godswill Akpabio put the chamber’s view plainly: you cannot revive what is already dead.
What the Senate adopted instead has two parts. First, the Federal Government should explore establishing an entirely new, viable national carrier rather than reusing the Nigeria Air structure. Second, and with a deadline attached, the government should renegotiate and enforce the air services agreement with China so Nigerian airlines can operate direct flights, and the Senate committees on Aviation and Foreign Affairs must monitor compliance and report back within four weeks. Senators warned that Chinese carriers’ privileges in Nigeria could be reviewed if reciprocity is denied.
The pairing is deliberate. Nigeria has had no functioning state flag carrier since Nigeria Airways was liquidated in 2003, and its travellers and exporters route through foreign hubs, while the China corridor, central to Nigerian trade, is served without a Nigerian direct operator. The motion’s sponsor, Senate Whip Tahir Monguno, framed enforcement of the existing agreement as the immediate lever.
Status: these are Senate resolutions, adopted by voice vote. They bind no one outside the chamber; renegotiation is an executive act, and no timetable for talks with Beijing has been announced. The four week committee report is the next verifiable step.