EU flights banned by FG from Nigeria

FG has said that it’ll begin to reciprocate the granting of permission for the operation of airlines in the country, as it opens its international airspace.

The implication of this is that only airlines from countries that allow flights from Nigeria will be allowed to fly into and out of Nigeria.

It was specific about airlines from the European Union not being allowed into Nigeria.

This is because the EU had recently banned flights and visitors from Nigeria.

It can be recalled that the Council of the European Union had opened its borders to 15 countries, excluding Nigeria.

According to information obtained from the EU website at the time, Nigeria was still not a part of the countries from where visitors were allowed into Europe.

Hadi Sirika, the Minister of Aviation said that the position of Nigeria was informed by the ban placed by some countries on flights from Nigeria.

He made this known at Thursday’s briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

Ably represented by Capt. Musa Nuhu, the Director-General, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, the Minister argued that the decision was taken in the interest of Nigerians.

He said,

“On the list of countries (that are banned), we are working on the comprehensive list, but the main one that came up is when the EU opened their borders effective 1st July, Nigeria was among the list of 54 countries that were not allowed to enter the EU.

To my understanding, as the situation changes, they are going to look at the list and change it. But so far, we don’t have any contrary information to that first one that Nigeria is banned from going to the EU.

So, as we open our airspace, we are going to apply the issue of reciprocity to those (EU) countries.”