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Thursday, May 8, 2025

T&T signs Bilateral Air Services Agreement with Nigeria 

by

Brent Pinheiro
23 days ago
20250415
Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, second from left, shakes hands with Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo after signing a Bilateral Air Services Agreement at the VIP Lounge of the Piarco International Airport yesterday. Also in picture are Minister in the Ministry of Works and Transport Richie Sookhai, left, and Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs Dr Amery Browne.

Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, second from left, shakes hands with Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo after signing a Bilateral Air Services Agreement at the VIP Lounge of the Piarco International Airport yesterday. Also in picture are Minister in the Ministry of Works and Transport Richie Sookhai, left, and Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs Dr Amery Browne.

KERWIN PIERRE

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.”


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