By Louis Achi
Nigeria’s largest carrier Air Peace has rejected the reason given by the Saudi Arabian authorities for the cancellation of visas of 264 passengers airlifted by the company from Nigeria to the middle-east kingdom.
Recall that in a statement, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia defended the visa cancellation, saying the passengers did not meet the Arab nation’s rules and regulations.
The Saudi Embassy said the Nigerians who were deported didn’t fulfill the entry conditions and requirements by the applicable rules and regulations of the Kingdom.
The statement added the deportation of the passengers was not targeting Nigerians.
The statement reads: “The passengers who were denied entry and subsequently deported to their initial destinations didn’t fulfill the entry conditions and requirements in accordance with the applicable rules and regulations of the Kingdom, as they submitted incorrect information to obtain a category of visa that doesn’t apply to them, which was discovered upon their arrival.
“This procedure was not limited to Nigerian citizens only, but rather to citizens of other countries.”
Reacting in a statement on Wednesday on its X (formerly Twitter) and signed by the airline’s chief operating officer, Oluwatoyin Olajide, Air Peace said that the visa cancellation was not the company’s fault.
The airline claimed that the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided a visa confirmation platform to verify the passengers’ visas before they were allowed to check in for the flight.
The statement read, “The visas of all passengers on the said flight to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia were checked and verified through the requisite procedures and were vetted to be valid before departure.
“The visas were verified using the visa confirmation platform provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Arabia, which confirmed the validity of each passenger visa before passengers were allowed to check-in for the flight.
“All the visas of the 264 passengers were duly verified, confirmed, and accepted as authentic for the trip through the visa portal provided by the Saudi Arabian authorities. If not, no passengers would have been able to depart from Nigeria.
“This is just one of two steps required before a passenger is accepted on the flight to Saudi Arabia. The next step is the use of the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS). We equally used this system to determine the admissibility or otherwise of each passenger on that flight.”
It also disclosed that the names of the passengers were sent to Saudi Arabia’s National Travel Security Center before the company’s flight took off from Nigeria.
“The APIS was live between Air Peace’s reservation system and the Saudi Arabia National Travel Security Center carrier portal to transmit passenger details prior to departure to the Saudi authorities in order to further determine the admissibility or otherwise of the passengers.
“No Notice of Cancellation or any form of denial from the Saudi authorities was received against any of these passengers despite the live transmission of their details.
“Furthermore, the Passenger manifest containing the names of all passengers on board the flight was sent to the Saudi Arabia National Travel Security Center carrier portal before the flight departure, yet no Notice of Visa Cancellation was received against any of these passengers.
“While we empathize with the affected passengers for this development and assure them of our full compliance with the provisions guiding international travels, we wish to state that up till this moment, the Saudi Arabian authorities have not provided any explanation for the sudden and unexpected cancellation of the visas,” the airline noted.
