Nigerian government vows to sanction foreign airlines selling tickets in dollars

ABUJA, Nigeria (The Informant) – The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) will start sanctioning international airlines refusing to sell tickets in naira, aviation minister said Wednesday.

Intelligence reports indicated that some of the airlines are refusing naira and charging their ticket fares in dollars in violation of the country’s laws, aviation minister Hadi Sirika told reporters in Abuja, adding that NCAA had been mandated to deal with any of such airlines willfully breaching the laws.

He said some of the airlines have also blocked local travel agencies from accessing their websites for transactions.

He added that the foreign airlines had made over $1.1 billion from Nigeria from 2016, which could have been retained in the country if they were local airlines.

The minister said the airlines remitted over $600 million to their home countries in 2016 while over $265 million had also been released this year out of about $484 million due to them.