When an internationally recognized political prisoner came out of prison to become the elected president of his country in South Africa and then again in Nigeria, observers considered the end of apartheid in 1994 and dictatorship in 1999 respectively as the two most significant political events in Africa at the close of the millennium.
The expected Jacob and Esau sibling rivalry for continental ascendancy never materialized as Africa's two largest economies promptly saw the need to work in tandem for accelerated development of the continent as a whole. This in a sense was the guiding philosophy behind Mbeki's African Renaissance (as distinct from Gaddafi's neurotic United States of Africa) which has given way to the more practical NEPAD - New Partnership for Africa's Development.
But a smaller less ambitious partnership between Africa's two brightest beacons crashed barely a year after takeoff with the recent collapse of South Africa and Nigeria's flag carriers joint-venture on the New York-Lagos route.
Stripped to the bone, the deal simply was this - Nigeria Airways having hopelessly self-destructed after years of culpably suicidal mismanagement was incapable of ferrying its shareholders and patrons (Nigerian Tax payers) anywhere beyond a one hour flight radius of Lagos. SAA which had planes and not enough people to fly (having one third of Nigeria's population) was offered a slice of Nigeria's meat-market for one third of "the deal".
What could possibly have gone wrong with such an arrangement that would literarily precariously place in dangerous waters our new-found brotherly affinity?
Shorn of all pretentions , the South Africans realized the sheer ludicruity of their raw deal with Nigeria stumbling on a concept unique to us that rears its head in many a political or economic context - called TNF - The Nigerian Factor.
Transatlantic Slave Trading
For one let's ask ourselves - what does an airline which is not airworthy bring to the table? Nigeria Airways Limited is worse off than Sudan Airways which is owned by a war-torn country of over 15 years. It was about equal to Afghanistan's Airline - the earth's acclaimed ultimate backwood - with two aircraft in a country run by a band of religious hoodlums in a theocratic anarchy and can't compare with Ethiopian Airlines also poor and war-ravaged.
Truth be told, the joint-venture deal was barely short of a mafia-like crime caper. A hustler tells a legitimate businessman he will provide him with patrons because he has a monopoly on the market. All he wants is one third of the "joint-venture" as payoff because let's face it, apart from the people, he brought nothing else to the equation.
There is of course something disturbing about the idea that Nigerians were being sold as chattel to another nation's airline because if NAL mean No Aircraft Left, then it was merely a trading company doing supply contracts like anyone except that the Local Purchase Order was for live breathing Nigerian humans. It was slave trading by other means - by planes across the Atlantic instead of by ship and the really neat thing this time is that the victims actually paid for their passage to the western plantations.
Indirect Rule
While it was the MDWBDC (monkey-de-work-baboon-de-chop) aspect of this bad deal that really irked SAA , one may wonder why the other British carriers British Airways and Virgin Atlantic which have similar seat allotment concordats with NAL have not found it so egregious.
The answer is age-old actually just slightly younger than the slave trade - colonialism. The British carriers know all too well that the days of open looting of their colonial possessions are over. Now all they need do is pay a commission on the ‘raw materials' that they are carting out of Africa and they can maintain business as usual.
It is indirect rule in its most brazen contemporary interpretation - we have a semblance of control so long as it furthers their goal. SAA with its Nigerian name, livery, colors et al was doubtless the ultimate charade akin almost to the protectorate of northern Nigeria which the colonialists ruled indirectly. Virgin and BA were more like the protectorate of southern Nigeria ruled directly as colonial territories.
Whereas the British Airlines know what they are in for, the South Africans didn't hence their feeling that NAL was playing them ‘ojoro'. Little did they know that this is the same sense of marginalization felt in the Niger Delta amongst numerous other minority victims of TNF.
Divide and Rule
There is a European version of this situation which is illustrated by my own experience. Last summer, scheduled to speak at a seminar in Nigeria on September 11, I couldn't for the life of me get a flight into Lagos, Port-Harcourt or even Kano on any airline so we had to postpone it.
After 911, I called the airlines to book airfares for November believing that there would be availability at reasonable cost following the tragic events. Virgin was offering an unheard of $844 from DC to Lagos round-trip but I wanted to patriotically patronise an American airline.
One airline which I use the most quoted me $2800 to fly from Washington DC to Lagos. "You can do better than that, I am sure" I told the airline agent "I am the one trying to do a favor to the distressed aviation sector by flying when reasonable folks are staying put".
She offered to reduce the fare by pricing it separately. She priced the fare from Washington to Amsterdam about $380 and then Amsterdam to Lagos which is equidistant and it was around $850 giving a total of $1230!
The shocking aspect for me was not because I would pay more than double if I asked to go to Lagos direct instead of breaking it down. It was something else.
Earlier our Trade Center had talks with Northwest about having direct flights to Nigeria in view of the new growing traffic between the US capital and the Nigerian capital and the vacuum created by the impending exit of Swiss Air. Since US law requires officials only to travel via US carriers, they could not fly with SAA's direct flight to Nigeria.
This was a concern to us as for investment purposes flight options is crucial. I will illustrate this with 3 experiences. In March 2000, we had a trade mission to meet with the President in Abuja but due to visa delays for some investors we missed the Abuja flight. Because of the demand on the flight our tickets cost $24,000 for a team of 4 ($6,000ea).
Because the launch of the Nigeria Trade Center was immediately following our missed appointment with the president we decided to fly through Lagos instead. In London we were kept for an inordinate time at British immigration before arriving Lagos deadbeat where the Sheraton hotel cost over $400 for two rooms. First thing in the morning we left for Abuja to catch our Seminar on Alternate Financing at the Abuja Sheraton starting at 9am but didn't get there till 11am seriously jet-lagged and exhausted. We could barely function till the evening Gala! On my way back to Washington that weekend, there were no seats on BA from London so I had to get another ticket for $700 from London to DC!
The next month I had to take another mission once again to Abuja from DC. I had planned to go in advance to ensure we did not have any serious hitches this time but ended up leaving the same day as the American team. However I got in ahead of them. How did I do this? While they flew from DC on Thursday afternoon on BA via London, I flew from NY and arrived Lagos at 5am Friday. I got to the Hilton Abuja by 9am checked in, made reservations for them, slept visited some govt offices and then went to pick them up at the airport that evening. It cost about $650!
Final example, Congressman JC Watts of Oklahoma organized a trade mission to Nigeria. 30 companies went while 50 others were turned back. Most of the team were stranded in Nigeria due to overbooked flights last summer - definitely not an inspiring experience for investors!
Anyway NWA bluntly declined our invitation to the Nigeria market because they claimed they were satisfied with their current level of business there. This did not make sense because the aviation sector was reeling from 911 and begging for a $15 billion bail out from the USG.
It however began to make sense with my new data. Here is how the math works. NWA and KLM have a partnership deal. NWA flies from DC to Amsterdam for say $380 per passenger. Out of this money they would have to recover overhead costs, make a profit and share same with KLM.
KLM then flies from Amsterdam to Lagos roughly the same distance but gets $850 per person even though its operational costs in Lagos are far lower because of cheap labour, fuel and naira transactions. It then shares profits with NWA. Without flying a single plane or doing anything NWA would get more money from the Lagos trip than from the Washington trip!
Accordingly there is no incentive for NWA to fly to Nigeria even though they have a virtual monopoly courtesy of the US government policy because by not flying to Nigeria they are making money all the same. It is their own version of the MDWBDC phenomenon.
Jankara Airlines
It is in this light that one must seriously consider the seats given to NAL by BA and Virgin for absolutely nothing to be protection money. So long as NAL was getting something for nothing they would not need to seriously attempt to fly and in this way would protect the dominance of the British carriers on that route. Ironically NAL tried to fly that route still which met with protracted resistance from the British authorities until recently.
There are two key lessons to be learnt from the SAA saga - one for Nigeria and one for Nigerians. Our policies, practices, principles and politics must be reviewed if we could lose a ‘brotherly' African partnership in such circumstances. Whether it is called revenue allocation, federal character, marginalization, there are certain home-grown practices that are repugnant if applied on an international scale as the joint-venture shows. The bogus joint-venture between Nigeria and the oil companies for one in which FGN has rarely if ever paid up its obligations simply sets us up for colonial style occupation and operations by the corporations in question - role reversal with oil companies acting as government and government acting as an oil company.
The lesson for us Nigerians on the other hand is that we are simply a commodity in the hands of the bureaucrats that be who can decide tomorrow to ‘joint venture' us as cargo with Afghanistan Airways or Air Jankara without any real stake or concern in our welfare. There is also certainly cause for concern about the flight situation from an economic standpoint namely:
- every airline flight out of Nigeria is concomitantly a financial foreign exchange flight of capital. Apart from the $1000+ airfares, you have $6000 BTA or $50,000 estacode in addition to the $150000 for medical treatment or buying houses overseas that the passengers take out. This does not include the felons who are siphoning millions more in undeclared repatriations of funds. When you compute the average value of forex outflow per flight of about $2 million by over 50 international flights every week, the multiplier effect on the economy is spectacular. In other words in the first quarter of 2002 alone potentially $1billion has literally ‘flown' out of Nigeria.
- to reverse the flight of capital and attract capital inflow through foreign direct investment, you need to have reliable and readily available flights. For example, 911 had a huge impact on the US economy because all 429 airports were shutdown meaning business deals were not happening, people were not staying in hotels or eating in restaurants etc as the ripple effect. Similarly the US requirement of US airlines for its employees safeguards against capital flight.
National Air Security
By far the most compelling concern though is the sure and certain immobility that would occur if our peregrinations were left solely at the mercy of foreign carriers. In view of the events of 911, it is no longer an improbable scenario that western carriers would be unable to fly outside their immediate environs due to safety considerations if for instance Richard Reed the shoe bomber had successfully blown up the international flight between Paris and the US.
Judging from what occured when Swiss Air tanked after 911, it is clear what would happen. The estimated 2 million Nigerians resident in the US alone would be stranded here. However unlike our American counterparts in Nigeria, we do not have a contingency plan or airlift capability of any sort. We would be hopelessly marooned as my colleague who went on a business trip home via Sabena was or my friends who were in the US for a conference during 911 were.
The primal objective of a national carrier is not merely to carry the flag but to assure accessibility and mobility for that country. It is in that sense a function of national security. When President Obasanjo was offered a plane by Castro to fly him down for the G77 meeting in Havana two years ago, he could have turned to a functional Nigeria Airways instead. Rather the President and his delegation had to fly on British Airways and in the process lost some luggage. Fortunately Nigeria has no national secret for the taking.
NAL's mistake was in assuming that all we need is for SAA to carry our flag and even that SAA was prepared to do. NAL needs to come up with a longer term solution that truly meets our transportation national security and political economy objectives and in that respect the aviation interests of Ghanians in the US is more secure than Nigerians.
Our mistake as Nigerians abroad and NAL's core patrons/target market was to leave the responsibility of securing our transportation interests into the notoriously inept hands of NAL. We can not afford to toy with our ability to shuttle between our fatherland and our adoptiveland. We are Nigerians by birth and Incidental-Americans or Americans by choice. We must be able to exercise that choice to explore our dual identity without let or hindrance.
Sadly the single policy issue which we as Nigerians abroad could agree on and unanimously work on was one which we have singularly failed to effect. Are we to say there are insufficient Nigerians abroad to buy out Nigeria Airways in a privatization effort and gaurantee our interests?
We should consider this the most important transnational security issue now and make it our top priority task in the weeks ahead in light of the changing face of the globe post September 11. We should be inspired by the resources and determination devoted by the US to the aviation industry since then knowing that in the new world we live in we must prepare for the unknown.
Where strategic thinking and creative foresight fail maybe we will rely on the other side to the famed Nigerian Factor - Nigerian ingenuity. In November I met a young Nigerian gentleman at Ikoyi Hotel in Lagos. In December he embarked on a journey to the west but not via Murtala Mohammed International Airport Lagos.
From time to time I get updates on his progress. He has since passed Algeria, been in caves, rocks and deserts like the Al Queda and is currently somewhere around Morrocco. He expects it will take six months to get to Europe but at his current pace he is making remarkably good time.
He thinks it is like the Trans Sahara trade routes of the old Songhai empire but for this young Nigerian who has never been in a plane, this is his reality in 2002 that of the Tuareg traders.
If we do not adopt or adapt the wheel, we will be doomed to reinvent the camel-back ride and that is the focal lesson of South Africa's termination of Nigeria's "Airpartheid." As for me I took my son to Nigeria to meet his grandparents in November. Who knows if we will not have that opportunity again in the inscrutable world that lies ahead of us?
Guides
