Seventeen owners of foreign-registered private jets, comprising top business moguls, leading commercial banks and other wealthy Nigerians, have dragged the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to court seeking to prevent it from grounding their planes for allegedly refusing to pay import duty on the jets.
The Federal Government had last November approved the decision of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to ground 91 private jets belonging to some wealthy Nigerians over their alleged refusal to pay import duties running to over N30 billion.
The NCS in a letter directed the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to ground the affected private jets with immediate effect.
In the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1565/2021, the private jet owners asked the court to determine, among other things, if they were liable to pay import duty.
According to the court document, the 17 applicants are Aircraft Trust and Financing Corp Trustee, UAML Corp, Bank of Utah Trustee, Masterjet AVIACAO Executive SA, Cloud Services Limited, MHS Aviation GmbH, and Murano Trust Company Limited, Panther Jets, SAIB LLC, Empire Aviation Group, and Osa Aviation Limited. The others are BUA Delaware Inc, Flying Bull Corporation Limited, Air Charter Inc, Sparfell Luftahrt GmbH, WAT Aviation Limited, and ATT Aviation Limited.
The court has yet to fix a date to hear the suit.
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