President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday declared a nationwide security emergency, ordering the Nigerian Police and Armed Forces to recruit additional personnel to tackle rising insecurity across the country.

In a statement issued from the Statehouse, the president directed the police to recruit 20,000 new officers, bringing the total planned intake to 50,000.

He also authorised the use of National Youth Service Corps camps as temporary training facilities for the recruits.

More to come…

President Bola Tinubu has forwarded a list containing three nominees for appointment as non-career ambassadors.

The disclosure was made through a letter transmitted by the President to the Senate requesting their confirmation.

The nominees are Kayode Are, Aminu Dalhatu, and Ayodele Oke.

The announcement was made towards the end of Thursday’s plenary session by Senate President Godswill Akpabio.

More to come…

Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development, has said the federal government may seize the assets of Dana Air to refund passengers and travel agents whose funds have remained trapped.

The minister made the disclosure on Tuesday in Abuja during the ministry’s fourth-quarter stakeholders’ engagement themed “leveraging public feedback to drive excellence in aviation services”.
Keyamo stated that he would also instruct the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to investigate the delay in processing the outstanding refunds.

He explained that the suspension of Dana Air’s operations was implemented to prevent a potential tragedy, stressing that safety was prioritised over commercial considerations.

Keyamo said the administration received “damning reports” on Dana Air’s safety record and operational standards during its review of the airline.

He added that although the NCAA decided to ground the airline, he urged the regulator to prioritise passenger safety based on the findings presented.
According to him, “for Dana, the problem is that it was a choice between safety and disaster.”

“So we didn’t take the commercial thing as a priority. The priority was safety and we all looked at the damning reports that we met on the table,” he said.

“It was a decision of the NCAA to suspend them, but I pushed them to say, look, these are the reports we are seeing on the table about safety record, about lack of standards that put the lives of Nigerians at risk.

“If they continue flying, I don’t know whether most of us will be here. Many of us would have been victims of one of those flights. God forbid.”

Keyamo said he has directed Chris Najomo, acting director-general of the NCAA, to determine how passengers and ticket agents can receive refunds.

The minister added that he has “asked Najomo to dig deep to find out how those passengers and agents will be refunded. He has to dig deep on that”.

“One solution will also be that if that same individual or those entities are trying to come back to aviation under any guise, whether to go and register a new AOC or use any business within the aviation sector, they have to go and settle their debts first,” he said.

“We should look at their assets. There are assets that are still available. Let them sell their assets.
“Let’s cannibalise their revenue and pay people. Let’s find a way to go after their assets and get money to pay Nigerians who are owed.

“NCAA should do that because they can’t get away with it.”

On April 24, 2024, Keyamo directed the NCAA to suspend the operations of Dana Air following an incident at Lagos airport a day earlier in which one of the airline’s aircraft veered off the runway.

Two days later, the minister said internal reports conducted two years before the incident showed that Dana Air was unfit to fly, adding that the frequency of incidents involving the airline prompted the suspension.

Keyamo also announced that President Bola Tinubu has approved special funding for the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to acquire equipment.

He explained that the new financing arrangement removes NAMA’s equipment procurement from the annual budget process.

Also, Ahmed Farouk, director-general of NAMA, said the agency now has a fully functional flight calibration unit for validating instrument approach procedures.

Farouk, represented by John Tayo, director of air traffic services, said NAMA has also signed agreements with Sierra Leone and Liberia to support calibration services in line with ICAO standards.
He added that night operations have been approved until 10pm at airports in Owerri, Enugu, Yola and Ilorin.

Farouk said the approvals follow stakeholder requests to extend operating hours beyond Lagos and Abuja.
He also stated that ad-hoc approval has been granted to Air Peace for flights to Anambra and Asaba.

“We are always available to grant extension because of our capacity. For now, we will not be able to operate all the airports in the country till 10pm,” he said.

The director-general added that, following Keyamo’s directive, operations remain open until 10pm at the listed airports.