CEO INTERVIEW Going to stock exchange was to leave a legacy – CEO Med-View Airline
Alhaji Muneer Bankole, MD/CEO of Med-View Airline, spoke with on the airline’s decision to inaugurate the Kaduna Jeddah - Saudi Arabia flight through Lagos and Kano, the economic potentials of the state and other aviation sector issues. Excerpts:
Your inaugural flight, so to speak, was fully booked from Lagos to Kaduna. What was the magic that attracted that large volume of passengers?
This is the work of Allah. Don’t forget one thing; whenever you focus on doing something, you have to put God first. When you put God first, he does everything for you. You can’t control it, you can’t champion it but when you leave it for Allah to run it for you, it is a walkover. We had the same experience when we started Dubai; we had over 80% load on the inaugural flight. That means Nigeria needed something; the people were yearning for something because you can see the convenience. Kano to Jeddah is four hours, 20 minutes maximum.
You have always flown to Jeddah from Kano, now you have extended the service to Kaduna, what informed the decision?
For those of you in Kaduna, I will tell you a secret. If you look at Nigerian history, and for those of us who are students of History - I grew up in Kaduna where I did my cadet programme - it was a very lovely, beautiful place, but it has been turned upside down. We had trees on Ahmadu Bello Way; we had night life in Kaduna; we worked 24/7; we were at the old airport in the 80s before they moved to this new airport which was a distance but that is the seat of power.
The best school, the military school, everything is based here. So in my career days in the eighties, we were very busy; we had a flight for every segment of Nigeria. If you talk of Yola, we called it 350; you talk of Enugu, we called it 260; if you talk of Kaduna we called it 500. We started working in the morning at 7’0clock; we ran Kaduna as if we were going to heaven because of the population - the military powers were there, everybody was in Kaduna State. Anything that anybody decided in Nigeria, if it was not started in Kaduna, you can forget it. You know they have celebrated a centenary (100 years). All the traditional emirate councils are based there. All of them used that place as a resting point where they decided everything overnight.
So we give thanks to God that we are helping to let Nigerians also appreciate what God has done. We can’t allow all that to go away because our children are going to have something to read. So that is what informed my going to Kaduna, and the government, let me be honest to you, the Executive Governor of Kaduna State, at a discussion, had challenged us that he wants services to be delivered to his people and thank God he has tested us three years consecutively on the Hajj and we have been able to deliver and we hope to improve on the services we rendered. I commend him and his team, the Chief of Staff, the cabinet and the rest of them. We need to bring it back to life. We are building; we are working with the government. We are bringing up a lot of new innovations. We are bringing in foreign partners who are working on the MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul). We are working on a lot of projects in Kaduna and we are praying; God will make them all fulfilled ones.
Talking about this flight, what opportunity does it offer to Nigerians, especially those performing Umrah?
The opportunities are abundant. You can work Monday to Friday; you can leave on Sunday, you go to Medina, two three days, we return to Makkah; we perform the Juma’at prayer, then we come back. There is no way you can detach yourself from the holy land, it is a blessing for every Muslim. You can come in on Thursday, go to Ka’aba, do your Juma’at prayer, Saturday or Sunday you go for Medina, then you come back home to resume work. It gives you a lot of comfort, you have the spiritual guidance, the purity, the blessing, everything.
What level of support and synergy are you getting from travel agents?
I was a travel agent myself; I established Med-View International Travel and Cargo in 2000 which metamorphosed into Med-View Konsult and Med-View Airline. Today, our strong partner is NANTA (National Association of Nigerian Travel Agents). We have a total of about 3000 travelling agents in our portfolio in the South West, North Central and North East. We have a platform called the Billing Settlement Portfolio which is a plan by IATA (International Air Transport Association) to provide security for the travel agents, the traveling public. I thank my colleagues who are in the travel world; we can’t do anything without going to the travel agents because they own the customers, they have the database and people rely on them more than individuals going to buy tickets on the shelf.
Starting from this year, 50% of pilgrims will be airlifted by airlines from Saudi Arabia. Are you not worried that this will significantly affect the local carriers that are also participating in the operation and who also have the capacity to actually handle these passengers?
My brother, it is all about competition. We have been there for 10 years; it is just to give Nigeria a challenge. Let us have competition on a clean slate, not a competition that is favoured or one-sided. You empower your own, you create jobs; you empower your own, you raise your economic power; you empower your own, you bring your children to history. All these other parties, I am not against them but the good thing is that there must be an encouragement for indigenous capacity.
For Med-View Airline, for the statement of capacity, for the statement of giving allocation to foreign carriers, it has not bothered us. I will tell you why. We are one person that is contented with whatever Allah gives. Whatever you get, may Allah give His baraka (blessings) more than anything, and we have been successful. So even if they give 70% what Allah will do, nobody can change it. Today, we are not only carrying Nigerians, for your information, we carry from Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Djibouti. You know, in the house sometimes, they don’t value what you own. So, outside we get better benefits and that makes us to say “why are we worrying ourselves about 20 or 40% somewhere. today we are one airline that doesn’t sit at home; we are doing London, Dubai, we are doing Jeddah, what are we talking about?
What legacy do you leave for Nigerians? wish to
I think the good news is that two years ago, we took a decision to become a Public Liability Company (PLC); it becomes everybody’s business, it’s no longer privately owned, it’s now a public quoted company. You are a stake holder and I will encourage you to buy into it so that we can collectively leave something for our children.
Today, we have posted on the net our third quarter report on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, we made a profit of about N1.4 billion in the third quarter. We have posted our figure, we are expecting N35.5 billion, it’s always open, no hiding place anymore. So if you go to the Stock Exchange, you will see the platform, you must report everything.
So I am hoping that everyone should buy into it. You know it already, we did the first AGM (Annual General Meeting), we declared profit and dividend was paid to shareholders and I expect those of you who are here to go ahead and buy into it because it can’t be run by anybody, it is only Allah that runs the business and if you look at that, you have no doubt.
In recent times, airlines in the country have been under enormous pressure about flight operations owing to the inclement weather being experienced, how have you been coping with these challenges and what is your plea to the authorities?
To be honest with you, we don’t need to wash our dirty linen in public. We have a lot to do. Believe me, in some airports, there is a lot to be done but we need to service our people. In Ilorin, for us to go there, we told the people, there are six, seven states that surround that place, we do a lot of study before we open a new route. When you look at Ilorin, we have Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Kogi and Niger. We have all these people looking for something to come to them but none of the states has anything to show so we decided to use Ilorin to bring them together and take them from there to the centre and bring them to the market area and bring them to the North. That is what we have achieved.
I went to Yola. I was not looking at Adamawa, I was looking at Taraba, they are enclosed; Jalingo is interior, how will they come out? We went to Yobe and the people have warmly received us. Any time I put any big aircraft in Yola, it is full. Now they don’t have seats. Every day is always full, if I don’t fly anywhere, I must go to Yola, they are wonderful people.
And the call to government?
When this government came to power, our dream was to have four refineries to be working and one of them to produce Jet A1 (Aviation fuel). Two years ago, that was our dream but I believe the dream is still alive. We are still importing fuel, jet A1 at high cost. Today we are paying almost N240.
I am so sad to tell you this, the fuel in the market is still 51 cents and the dollar is still N364 at the parallel market; at government’s market, we buy at N307; they sell at N340, N350 in the bank. We pray to God to change everything.