The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Aviation, Hajiya Binta Bello has said that the Ministry is ready to do everything possible to ensure that the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) signed on the 29th October, 2014 with the state of Israel is activated. She disclosed this while playing host to the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC), John Kennedy Opara and his Management team in her office.
Hajiya Bello disclosed to the Executive Secretary that the information available to her showed that BASA was signed on the 29th October, 2013, but the implementation has not started. She further stated that the Israeli Authorities sent in Aviation Security Measures to be addressed as part of the conditions to be met before it could activated. She added that Stakeholders have met on that and reports were sent to the office of the National Security Adviser.
She assured that the Ministry of Aviation would follow up as soon as possible with the Office of the NSA. In her words, “we need to close up this agreement so that our brothers and sisters would be able to travel to Israel to perform their pilgrimage without stress”.
Earlier, the Executive of NCPC, John Kennedy Opara thanked the Permanent Secretary for obliging him and his Management team to discuss issues of National interest. He hinted his host that his visit was to find out the status of the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) signed last year but yet to be activated and also to know the information to relate back to Mr. President who is very desirous to getting the agreement activated.
The NCPC Scribe explained that if the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) is activated it would boost and strengthen the economic ties between the State of Israeli and Nigeria.
He stated that the activation of BASA would reduce the long hours that is associated with the pilgrimage exercise from 9 hours to 5 hours.
