Stop Bringing Tribal Sentiments To My Gesture To Airlift Stranded Nigerians, Air Peace Boss Warns

The Chairman of Air Peace, Allen Onyema has called on Nigerians to desist from tribalising his kind gestures to stranded citizens abroad.

The Air Peace boss made the comment on Wednesday after he announced on Monday the free evacuation of stranded Nigerians in war-torn Sudan.

Around 5,500 trapped Nigerians in Sudan had made frantic appeal to the Nigerian government to help them flee Sudan.

Onyema said, “Again, Air Peace is willing to evacuate Nigerians stranded in Sudan free of charge if the government can get them to a safe and secure airport in any of the neighbouring countries bordering Sudan. Everything must not be left to the government and the government alone.

“It will be a privilege and honour of tremendous pride that we will be out there to give every Nigerian stranded in Sudan a sense of pride and oneness in their country.

“We are very ready to do it immediately. No time wasting. Any action that would promote national pride, national cohesion, peace and unity, we are for it.”

However, Onyema’s gestures were given a tribal undertone on the micro-blogging site, Twitter. The conversation trended as ‘Air Peace and Igbo’.

He told Arise Tv, “It is not a publicity stunt because I have been doing it right from secondary school to the university. I have been trying to do things centered on bringing Nigeria together because I believe it is something that we should be proud of.

“It pains me that my gesture has turned and started causing a kind of problem everywhere in social media. People are trying to bring an ethnic angle into it. For the Igbos who are routing for me that an Igbo man is going to do this and that, please stop.

“For other tribes in Nigeria who are not Igbos and have something or the other to say about it, stop. It is a Nigerian thing. It is not Igbo, Yoruba, or Hausa thing. I don’t want a good gesture to be turned into an ethnic debacle. It pains me and makes me uncomfortable to the extent that I might not do this again because I want to promote unity and not to cause disunity with my gestures.”

Onyema said he sees such service as a privilege as it allows him to contribute his quota to the Nigerian project.

Onyema said, “Nigeria is a country of about 378 ethnic nationalities, this is supposed to be our strength. The diversity we have today is an envy to all. It pains me that we have not been able to weave the country together. Over 60 years of our independence. It pains me.

“So, whatever I have to do to encourage people to come together to promote unity and at the same time encourage nationalism as against ethnic and religious nationalism which we have in this country. That is why I do it. I believe we could be better than what we are having.

“378 ethnic nationalities are a source of strength but we are not harnessing that. Instead, this blessing God has given us has become an albatross of a kind and it pains me.

“At all times, I love using God’s blessing to see how I could help my country. It is not by evacuation alone. I laid down my life in the Niger Delta for this country. To me, that is my greatest service to this nation because Boko Haram would have been child’s play. I laid down my life and got Niger Delta sorted and today everybody is enjoying and people have forgotten all that.”

In 2020 during Covid, the airline helped evacuate Nigerians in India. He also evacuated Nigerians during the xenophobia attacks against Africans in South Africa.