Posted by Samuel on Wed 26th Nov, 2025 - tori.ng
He said the ministry has already directed the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to launch a full investigation into why refunds have not been processed months after the airline’s suspension.
The Nigerian government may consider seizing and liquidating Dana Air’s assets to refund thousands of stranded passengers and travel agents whose funds are still tied up, according to the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo.
Speaking in Abuja during the ministry’s fourth-quarter stakeholders’ engagement themed “Leveraging Public Feedback to Drive Excellence in Aviation Services,” Keyamo declared that the days of airlines jeopardising public safety and walking away with Nigerians’ money are over.
He said the ministry has already directed the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to launch a full investigation into why refunds have not been processed months after the airline’s suspension.
Keyamo revealed that the suspension of Dana Air’s operations earlier this year was taken to avert a looming catastrophe, insisting that safety concerns outweighed commercial considerations.
"For Dana, the problem is that it was a choice between safety and disaster. So we didn’t take the commercial thing as a priority. The priority was safety and we all looked at the damning reports that we met on the table,” he said.
According to the minister, the administration received damning reports on the airline’s safety records, including lapses in operational standards that put passengers at serious risk.
“It was a decision of the NCAA to suspend them, but I pushed them to say, look, these are the reports we are seeing on the table about safety record, about lack of standards that put the lives of Nigerians at risk.
“If they continue flying, I don’t know whether most of us will be here. Many of us would have been victims of one of those flights. God forbid," he said.
Keyamo disclosed that he has instructed Chris Najomo, Acting Director-General of the NCAA, to dig deep and identify viable recovery channels to ensure that every affected passenger and ticket agent is refunded.
“One solution will also be that if that same individual or those entities are trying to come back to aviation under any guise, whether to go and register a new AOC or use any business within the aviation sector, they have to go and settle their debts first.
“We should look at their assets. There are assets that are still available. Let them sell their assets. Let’s cannibalise their revenue and pay people. Let’s find a way to go after their assets and get money to pay Nigerians who are owed."
Keyamo insisted that the NCAA must ensure the airline does not evade accountability: “They can’t get away with it.”
On April 24, 2024, the NCAA suspended Dana Air’s operations on Keyamo’s directive after one of its aircraft veered off the runway at Lagos airport a day earlier.
Just two days later, the minister revealed that internal reports — completed as far back as two years before the runway incident — had already warned that the airline was unfit to fly, describing the repeated incidents involving the carrier as unacceptable.