Victor EzejaMinister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has revealed that plans to resume cargo flight operations between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia have been concluded.
Keyamo, who made this known on Monday at the ministerial press briefing in Abuja to mark President Bola Tinubu’s one year in office however, did not mention any specific date for the resumption of cargo flight services between the two countries.
The aviation minister recently travelled to Saudi Arabia for the Future Aviation Forum in Riyadh.
” I have good news for you from Saudi Arabia. I met my counterpart in Saudi Arabia and we have agreed to resume cargo flights,” Keyamo said.
“We have agreed that we are going to resume cargo flights between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. This has been suspended for long, but now cargo flights are back.”
Earlier in a post on his official X (formerly Twitter) account, Keyamo said he and the Minister of Transportation and Logistics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Saleh Al-Jasser, had a discussion about resuming cargo flight operations on the sidelines of the FAF.
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Part of the post read: “With the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the discussion was about the resumption of cargo flight operations between both countries that had gone comatose over the years. Both sides agreed to resume the operations and appointed focal persons to work out the modalities.”
With the resumption of the cargo flight, Nigeria and Saudi will be justling to have a share of the trillions of dollars of global world trade that occur through cargo operations.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), cargo flight operations convey over $6 trillion worth of goods, representing approximately 35 per cent of world trade by value.
Keyamo noted that the meeting he equally had with his counterpart from the state of Qatar on the sidelines of the FAF centred around implementing the Bilateral Air Space Agreement between the Middle East country and Nigeria.
The latest move for both countries to resume cargo flight operations, comes after the recent announcement by Emirates Airline that it would resume Lagos-Dubai flight services on October 1, 2024. These developments are seen as significant progress towards improving Nigeria’s diplomatic relations with the Middle East, especially in the aviation sector.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
