Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

T&T and Nige­ria are now di­rect­ly con­nect­ed by air, at least on pa­per, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day signed a Bi­lat­er­al Air Ser­vices Agree­ment (BASA) with Nige­ria at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The agree­ment al­lows air­lines to trans­port pas­sen­gers and car­go be­tween the two na­tions un­der what is known as Fifth Free­dom Rights, which, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion, al­low sched­uled flights to op­er­ate from a home coun­try, stop in an in­ter­me­di­ate coun­try to drop off/pick up pas­sen­gers, and then con­tin­ue on to a third coun­try. 

Nige­ria’s Min­is­ter of Avi­a­tion and Aero­space De­vel­op­ment Fes­tus Keyamo went one step fur­ther, call­ing on T&T to make Nige­ria the gate­way to Africa.

He said, “As your in­flu­ence in Africa grows, we of­fer you to be the hub of Africa. Nige­ria opens its door to T&T. Come and be the hub of Africa. Un­der the fifth free­dom, we of­fer you fifth free­dom (rights)”. 

Though T&T has signed mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with sev­er­al African na­tions, this is the first BASA to be signed with an African coun­try – a process that has been in train for 22 years.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan ex­plained that BASAs take time, es­pe­cial­ly when there is a change in gov­ern­ment.

He said, “We have some agree­ments that took 30 years be­cause once you have a gov­ern­ment change, you have a pol­i­cy change. What may be a pri­or­i­ty for one gov­ern­ment may not be a pri­or­i­ty for the oth­er gov­ern­ment.”

How­ev­er, with the avi­a­tion sec­tor a key part of Gov­ern­ment’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust, Sinanan re­vealed 15 more air ser­vices agree­ments are ready to be signed with coun­tries such as Chi­na, Colom­bia, Chile, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Brazil and France. 

In the mean­time, the work to con­vince air­lines to op­er­ate be­tween T&T and Nige­ria be­gins im­me­di­ate­ly.

“We’re go­ing to look back, you know, at home and see the air­lines that have the ca­pac­i­ty to start this route im­me­di­ate­ly. We urge you to al­so look back home and you know, start this route im­me­di­ate­ly,” Keyamo said.

He added, “Let’s cre­ate the traf­fic, let’s cre­ate the routes...af­ter the World War the routes were aban­doned. It’s all in­ter­na­tion­al aero pol­i­tics.”