Management of Air Peace has accused a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos, Mr. Joe Igbokwe of cheap blackmail.
This was in reaction to a post made by Igbokwe on his Facebook page, Tuesday, where he accused the Airline of barring him from travelling with their flight to Abuja.
Igbokwe, a Special Assistant to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos, had linked the development to a disagreement he had with the Airline last year over alleged poor customer service.
According to Igbokwe, he was blocked and subsequently turned back upon arrival with a directive that he would not be allowed to fly Air Peace for criticizing the Airline last year.
But reacting in a statement made available to Igbere TV on Wednesday, in Abuja, Air Peace denied the allegations, saying Igbokwe was only turned back for arriving late.
Full Statement,
“Our attention has been drawn to a Facebook post by one Mr Joe Igbokwe who is alleging that Air Peace deprived him of his 6:30am flight (P47120) from Lagos to to Abuja on November 19, 2019. His post says Air Peace ‘blocked’ him from traveling. We are stating categorically here that this allegation is untrue. We could not have “blocked” an individual that flies with us, even last week.
“It is true that Mr Igbokwe was at Air Peace counter to get his boarding pass but he arrived late. For a 6:30am flight, Mr Igbokwe got to our counter at 6:15am whereas check-in had closed at 6am.
“When we could not check him in, he requested to be on the next flight (8am) to Abuja but it was already full. This was clearly explained to him. This was exactly what played out.
“How could we have blocked him for criticizing us for an event that happened a year ago? How could Air Peace have blocked him all of sudden when, in fact, he has never ceased flying Air Peace since the said event of last year? We are still at loss as to the reason and motive behind the avalanche of attacks on this airline by this same man at every given turn.
“As a government official, we expected that Mr. Igbokwe should have known better than he did by using the social media to defame an airline, especially in an era that the government is trying to sanitise the social media space. Mr Igbokwe’s post is malicious and unacceptable.
“The Toyoso Akerele Ogunsiji whom he cited in the post has denied saying or doing what Mr Igbokwe attributed to her. Passengers confirmed that he came late. We make bold to say that even the Chairman/CEO of Air Peace, has been missing his flights and never called for procedures to be shortchanged for him even though he owns the airline.
“Air Peace is strongly committed to giving its passengers an excellent service and will never treat any passenger unfairly. Mr Igbokwe’s perspective is a misrepresentation of the reality and should be disregarded. We still regard him as our customer and will never block him from patronizing us.”
