Emirates Airline has said it’s suspending flights operations to Nigeria following its inability to repatriate trapped funds from the country.
The airline in a statement issued by its Public Relations Manager, Rula Tadroson, on Thursday, said it had no option but to suspend flights to and from Nigeria from 29 October 2022.
The statement reads, “Emirates has continued to actively seek a solution for the repatriation of the remainder of its blocked funds in Nigeria. We were encouraged by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s efforts of reviewing our request, and considered that this critical issue would be swiftly resolved with the subsequent clearance of our remaining funds.
“However, Emirates has yet to receive an allocation of our blocked funds to be repatriated. Without the timely repatriation of the funds and a mechanism in place to ensure that future repatriation of Emirates’ funds do not accumulate in any way, the backlog will continue to grow, and we simply cannot meet our operational costs nor maintain the commercial viability of our operations in Nigeria.”
It would be recalled that this is not the first time Emirates is suspending flight operations to Nigeria.
On September 1st, the airline had suspended all flights to Nigeria following the ongoing challenges in repatriating trapped funds from Nigeria.
