By Joel Arinze
Yesterday, an EFCC witness told a Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja that the Nigeria Air launch of May 2023 was nothing but a borrowed Ethiopian Airlines jet, a few hired models, and a former minister who knew the whole thing would be over in less than 72 hours.
Christopher Odofin, the 12th prosecution witness in Hadi Sirika’s fraud trial, read from the charter agreement with Ethiopian Airlines. The aircraft, registration number ET-APL, left Addis Ababa on the evening of May 26, 2023. It arrived in Abuja the next morning. It sat on the tarmac for static display until May 28. And on the morning of May 29, the day President Bola Tinubu was sworn in, the plane flew back to Ethiopia.
The agreement said Ethiopian crew would operate the flight. In their Ethiopian Airlines uniforms. Local models could be hired to wear Nigeria Air uniforms for ceremonial pictures. The models could even fly in from Addis Ababa on the chartered jet.
That was the contract. Signed on May 24, 2023. Five days before Sirika left office. Five days before the whole thing collapsed.
Less than 72 hours. That was Nigeria’s “national carrier.”
It is now almost three years since Hadi Sirika pulled that stunt. And the case is still in court.
The EFCC first arrested and charged Sirika, along with his daughter Fatima, his son-in-law Hamma Jalal Sule, and their company Al Buraq Global Investment Limited, in April 2024. The charges: abuse of office and misappropriation of public funds to the tune of over N2.8 billion. Since then, the trial has seen adjournments, objections, rulings on inadmissible statements, and more adjournments. Yesterday, the EFCC paraded its 12th witness. The judge has now adjourned again until June 17 to play a voice note that prosecutors say contains Sirika’s own voice instructing a permanent secretary to award contracts to his friend’s company.
On May 26, 2023, the day that Ethiopian jet landed in Abuja, Hadi Sirika went on X, formerly Twitter, and posted. He wrote: “We are here. To Almighty God be all the glory. It has been a very long, tedious, daunting and difficult path… This, by the will of God, will be for us and generations to come.”
He stood on that tarmac. He smiled for the cameras. He typed that tweet. And he knew. He knew the plane was a rental. He knew it would be gone before the next administration could unpack its boxes. He knew Ethiopian crew would fly it, not Nigerians. He knew local models would wear the uniform, not Nigerian pilots. He knew all of this. The contract said so, in plain English.
Yet he tweeted “for generations to come.”
The nerve to look millions of Nigerians in the eye and pull off that deception is something else.
And this was not some random politician. This was the Minister of Aviation. The man in charge of one of the most sensitive sectors in the country. Safety. Security. Standards. Regulations. All under his watch. And he used that office to rent a plane for a weekend photoshoot, at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of naira.
The EFCC witness also told the court that the contract for the Nigeria Air start-up was awarded to Tianaero Nigeria Limited, a company owned by Sirika’s close friend, Gabriel Tilmann. The contract was N299 million in April 2022. It was later extended to more than N599 million on Sirika’s instruction.
Then there is the voice note. Investigators found it on the phone of Enitan Muyiwa Abel, a former Permanent Secretary in the ministry. The voice note came from Spain. The sender was Hadi Sirika. He was allegedly instructing the permanent secretary to make sure the contract went to Tianaero.
That compact disc — Exhibit 37 — was tendered in evidence yesterday. No one objected. The court will play it on June 17.
Hadi Sirika is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. That is the law. That is how it should be. But whether the court eventually finds him guilty or not, Nigerians already know what they saw. The House of Representatives Committee on Aviation called the exercise “highly opaque, shrouded in secrecy, shoddy and capable of ridiculing and tarnishing the image of Nigeria before the international community.”
The case continues on June 17, when the EFCC will play the voice note before the court. Maybe we will hear Sirika himself, from Spain, telling a permanent secretary at the Ministry of Aviation what to do and whom to award the said contract he allegedly used to pull the wool over the eyes of over 200 million Nigerians. Then, maybe we will get closer to the truth.
But even without that recording, one thing is clear. Hadi Sirika tweeted about generations to come while renting a plane that stayed for a weekend. That is a fact. What one makes of that is a matter of personal judgment.
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