NigerianFLIGHTDECK Travel and Business Reportage 
A former worker of the defunct national carrier, the Nigeria Airways has stated that the establishment and successes of Med-view Airlines Limited by one of their own is an indicator that the dedicated airline workers were not responsible for the killing of the airline.
Mallam Bello Salihu, who is the Managing Director, Butake Resources Limited, a ground handling company based in Kaduna,said he and his colleagues who worked with the national carrier have been exonerated.
Speaking with newsmen during the recent inaugural flight of Med-View Airline’s Lagos-Kaduna-Kano-Jeddah flight, Salihu declared that former workers of the defunct carrier have the competency to successfully run an airline.
It would be recalled that former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004 liquidated the carrier over alleged mismanagement and corruption.
However, there has been an unending blame game over the propriety of Obasanjo’s liquidation of the carrier which, in its heydays, was one of the thriving national airlines in the world flying to virtually all continents.
Worse still, the workers of the airlines have fought relentlessly for the payment of their pension which up till today is still being anxiously awaited.
However, Bello said those blaming the former workers for the fate suffered by the defunct carrier are being insincere.
This, he stressed, has been much proven by the Managing Director of Med-View Airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole who also cut its teeth as an aviator with the Nigeria Airways.
He said, “I always tell people the coming of Alhaji Bankole as a Chief Executive of an Airline in Nigeria is a total exoneration that we have the capacity, we have the talent, we have the human resource to run any outfit especially in the aviation sub- sector.
“Today the whole international regulatory body in the world which is ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) is headed by a Nigerian. So what is strange in us is that we are not patient. We don’t respect our leaders. We don’t respect entrepreneurship. We pray and let God continue to give us leaders who support the youth”.
