{"id":15728,"date":"2018-09-20T08:23:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T08:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15728"},"modified":"2018-09-20T08:23:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T08:23:41","slug":"nigeria-suspends-relaunch-of-national-airline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15728","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria suspends relaunch of national airline"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"96\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">Nigeria is suspending the relaunch of its national airline just over two months after it announced the new venture, the country&#8217;s aviation minister has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The government had planned to launch the prestige project in December to make good on a promise by Muhammadu Buhari when he ran for president in 2015. He will seek re-election in February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">&#8220;I regret to announce that the Federal Executive Council has taken the tough decision to suspend the national carrier project in the interim,&#8221; Hadi Sirika, junior aviation minister, said on Wednesday on Twitter after the weekly cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All commitments due will be honoured,&#8221; he said. No reason was given for the decision.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate statement, Sirika said: &#8220;The suspension was strategic and had nothing to do with politics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The airline was part of a plan to improve infrastructure that has suffered due to decades of neglect and underinvestment. The government says improvement will require private investment.<\/p>\n<p>The plan to relaunch the carrier was announced in July. A private operator, sought through a Public Private Partnership, would manage it according to a document seen by Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n<p>The plan was for the government to own no more than five percent.<\/p>\n<p>The chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines said in August the airline was frontrunner to set up and manage the carrier.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria Airways, the original national airline, operated for 45 years until 2003. Air Nigeria, its successor, ran from 2005 to 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nigeria is suspending the relaunch of its national airline just over two months after it announced the new venture, the country&#8217;s aviation minister has said. The government had planned to launch the prestige project in December to make good on a promise by Muhammadu Buhari when he ran for president in 2015. He will seek&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}