₦airaland Forum

I agree that her comments are quite offensive. But, beyond the offensive nature, the background of what she is saying is true.
It is known all around the world that the private sector is better than government with managing businesses; hence, the reason why lots of governments go into Public-Private Partnerships. Since the Private sector has healthy competition, they are forced to deliver better services for reasonable prices; Unlike when the government manages a system, even when they are losing money from over-staffing and poor management and so on, they just continue investing money from other sectors without trying to improve their management or tackle the reason for the losses.

That aside, the airline industry is the worst performing industry in the world. Even Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Atlantic said "If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline".
The airline industry is the least performing in terms of return on investment: the last time I checked, it was a miserly 4% return; and this return was not made from the aircraft itself, most of the profits came from hotels, tourism, and so on (this is why most airlines have hotel and tourism adverts lurking around their websites).

That aside, as I previously stated, governments are worse than the private sector in terms of business acumen and management; Nigeria is worse off than most governments. I can hardly think of anything that the Nigerian government has managed successfully in recent years. Thus, the government's venture into the airline industry (which is the least performing industry even in developed countries) looks like a guaranteed path to failure, loss of tax-payers and national funds - hence, Oby Ezekwesili's outburst.

In my opinion, governments should stick to regulating private companies and stay out of business: Regulating the private companies by stating the standards of services expected, fining those in breach of those standards, rewarding excellent services on different metrices (eg. number of Nigerian staff employed, environmental consciousness of the company, percentage of satisfied customers, etc.).

There are different models with which the national carrier can come into effect without the government taking significant risks: BOM (Build-Operate-Manage) or BOMT (Build-Operate-Manage-Transfer). The BOM involves the government putting the Nigerian Air project to tender, they state the deliverables (what they expect private sector to provide). A list of interested firms submit their bids, stating the time,costs, and so on for them to do so; the government goes through the bids and picks the best; the winning firm builds, operates and maintains the airline. The government collects all the revenue from the airline but pays the private firm after they have built the Nigeria Air satisfying all the deliverables, and pay the private firm periodically based on the operating and maintenance level of satisfaction.
The BOMT is the same as the BOM but includes the transfer of the Nigeria Air project back to the government after a certain number of years of operating by the private firm: by this time, the private firm must have acquired profits from the project, and the government would be able to run the airline having monitored and learning how to better manage the airline for so many years.

In summary, even though Oby's comments sounded unpatriotic, what she said is largely true and would have helped her case if she explained why she felt the project would fail. Still, I think the Nigerian government should not delve into more management. The oil sector, the financial sector, the roads, the educational sector, the power sector, and so on, are all on a downward spiral or at best stagnant; adding another project to manage in the difficult airline industry looks like another way to lose more money and further embezzle money. Rather than the Nigerian government managing the Nigeria Air project, it ought to have been put up for tender.

P.S.: Ignore any errors if any: I didn't proof-read.
Cheers.