Press Statement
Caverton Helicopters Denies Being Pressured to Deny Rivers State
Challenges Rivers State Govt. to Produce Evidence of Contract or Mandate with Us on the Aircraft
Our attention has been drawn to the report of the Justice and Aviation committees of the House of Representatives of Thursday alleging that Caverton Helicopters had relationship with Rivers State Government in obtaining clearances for the operation of the aircraft N565RS and that we were pressured into denying its contractual relationship with Rivers State.
For public records, we wish to state as following:
- We urge the public to look beyond political considerations and engage the facts as they are;
- We want to restate that the only relationship that we have had with this aircraft was the request for importation, which was communicated to the Minister of Aviation on 27 August 2012. This request was not consummated, as the Canadian company that mandated us to write the initial letter of request (ACASS) later told us to stay action as they were no longer in charge of the aircraft;
- We want to restate that subsequent requests for clearance permit for the aircraft did not originate from us. We maintain that the requests sent for flight clearance in our name were forged and we are inviting security agencies to investigate the matter;
- We also maintain that the curious attempt to conflate request for importation with application for flight clearances is at best tendentious. The two are not, and cannot be, the same;
- 5. And lastly, we challenge the Rivers State Government to show evidence that it has a contractual relationship with us on this aircraft. We challenge Rivers State to show any mandate, any contract, any correspondence, any form of payment to us for providing the purported services to them in the last eight months as they claimed. It is inconceivable that, as a business, we will be providing the purported services to them for free and without any form of documentation.
For more information, please contact:
Waziri Adio
