The Senate on Tuesday denied the report that it had suspended the proposal to make Eagle Airlines as the national carrier, stressing that there was no such report before it.
It was reported on Tuesday that the Senate Committee on Aviation had suspended the decision to make the airline the national carrier.
However, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Hope Uzodinma, said his committee was not aware of the proposal.
He maintained that the matter had not been brought before the committee, but added that the issue would be dealt with when brought before it.
He said, “I don’t know where you got that report because the matter is not before us yet. But if, in the course of our oversight programme, we come across that, we will deal with that properly.
“It is not before us and whosoever speaks on it did that as an individual, not as a position of the committee.”
Uzodinma also said the committee was acting within the ambit of the constitution by advising the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency to suspend the recent charges it imposed on local and foreign registered private airline operators, on non-scheduled flights in the country.
He said, “I don’t want to deal with insinuations. As you know, we have our oversight responsibilities and the role to play in the discharge of our duties.
“The issue of government is one entity that has three arms or three legs-the legislature, executive and the judiciary. Here in the legislature, we have the responsibility of looking what the executive is doing; whether they are fully in compliant with the law made by us or not; how government revenues are managed and spent; how money appropriated for government projects are also utilised.”
He also said, “So, it is in keeping with that mandate of the constitution that we have advised, through our legislative instruments, to get NAMA to do the proper thing.
“There is no doubt that NAMA has the right to levy charges on these operators but the constitution, the Act that establishes that powers, also made it mandatory for NAMA to do that only in consultation with the critical stakeholders, that is, the operators.
“In this case, we did not see evidence that the stakeholders were properly consulted and the required level of consensus that was supposed to be built before such charges are fixed was not also complied with.”
The senator said NAMA would, in the interest of the nation, not go against that which was logical and would not want to deliberately violate the law.
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