• Bags Corporate Award of Excellence

Isola Moses

Air Peace, a Nigerian-owned airline, has concluded plans to open the Ibadan route through direct flights connecting the city to Abuja, Kano and Owerri respectively.

Chief Allen Onyema, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO), disclosed this at the University of Ibadan (UI) Alumni Association Luncheon and Awards, held in Ibadan, the Oyo State Capital.

Agency report states Chief Onyema said the new routes would soon have flights connecting the largest city in West Africa to other parts of the country by air.

The airline event also bagged the Corporate Award of Excellence in the delivery of safe and comfortable flights, ostensibly in recognition of its excellence in the local air travel industry in Nigeria.

Onyema, while appreciating the award from the University, said: “Very soon, we shall start flying Abuja-Ibadan-Abuja daily, Kano-Ibadan-Kano and Owerri-Ibadan-Owerri three times a week.”

“My joy knows no bounds today. I appreciate this academia because it contributed to making me who I am today. I love my country and will continue to live a life of selflessness,” he said

He urged his fellow alumni to toe the same path by giving back to the university and the larger society.

Earlier while delivering a lecture at the forum, titled: “Nigeria and the Rise and Rise of Ethnic Nationalism,” the Air Peace boss noted that the bane of Nigeria’s problem was her inability to live beyond the prisms of ethnicity.

He said the country’s multi-ethnicity was supposed to be its strength, but it had become an albatross.

The UI alumnus, who bemoaned how Nigerians whip up ethnic sentiments in salient national discourses, remarked that “we must make a resolve to start harnessing the powers that lie in our ethnic composition and leverage them for the development of the country.”