Ime Akpan
The former director of operations in the defunct Nigeria Airways, Capt Dele Ore, the former Director of Operations, Nigeria Airways has said that the sack of 47 pilots in one day by the federal government in the defunct Nigeria Airways was one of his saddest moments in the service.
Speaking in Lagos at the pre-event press briefing of the launch of his latest book ‘The Learned Commander,’ Ore also said he was appointed and sacked as the chief pilot in the defunct national airline thrice by different governments.
He said the government’s policy and poor health of some of the pilots led to the sack of 47 in 1988.
He explained that the federal government had wanted to reduce the airline’s workforce by 50 per cent.
He said before the retrenchment, the airline had about 3,700 staff but maintained that the sack of the pilots was a step in the wrong direction which, according to him, affected the airline adversely.
Ore who became a pilot at 21 recalled that he found it painful that 47 pilots were sacked under his watch, stressing that most of those sacked were already captains who the federal government trained for at least nine years.
On ‘The Learned Commander’ Ore said the 30-chapter book to be presented at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos encapsulates everything about his life from the cockpit to the court room as a legal practitioner.
Speaking on the plan by the federal government to float a new national carrier, Ore noted that appointing foreign technical advisers was a wrong step by the minister of state for aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.
“You don’t need all these financial advisers, transaction advisers. Where is Dele Ore? Where are Taiwo Adenekan and the like?
“And when the thing is now coming so close to election, it is another agenda. I cannot fault the policy, the plan, but I have always said, may be that is the reason they don’t come to me, we are talking about a national carrier, but I said no, a flag carrier.”
