Checkout Magazine has learned that the aircraft in the Presidential Air Fleet is at risk of being impounded by foreign creditors.
Findings show that the PAF was indebted to several service providers for various upgrades carried out on the 10 aircraft in the fleet to meet the required airworthiness.
The PAF provides secure airlift to the President, the Vice-President, their immediate families, and other top government officials.
However, due to inadequate funding, it was gathered that some installations on the aircraft had again been postponed to 2023.
The PAF Commander, Air Vice Marshal Abubakar Abdullahi, who stated these in his budget defense presentation at the National Assembly, also complained that only N1.5bn was allocated for the maintenance of the aircraft out of the proposed N4.5bn.
Abdullahi stated, “It is pertinent for this honorable committee to note that for successive years, the fleet has been grossly underfunded, which has made it difficult to operate. From the fleet’s records, debts from preceding years are usually carried over into the following budget year and it is becoming a tradition.
“Permit me to also state that most of these debts are owed to service providers overseas. Considering that over 85 percent of the fleet’s expenditure is forex transactions, the actual budget figure in dollar terms is further diminished.
“The fleet is currently indebted to some of its service providers due to insufficient funding from budgetary allocations and the situation makes it bad for planning. As stated earlier, we currently have to have some mandatory upgrades done on our aircraft to meet airworthiness requirements.”
The Presidency has maintained 10 aircraft since the inception of the Buhari regime in May 2015.
Though Buhari promised to reduce the size of the fleet as part of his pledge to cut the cost of governance, checks revealed that his regime had failed to live up to this promise.
