It has taken almost three years for this to come to fruition, but barring any unforeseeable circumstance, the number of airlines juggling for space in Nigeria’s skies would increase by one with the entrance of Rano Air. The airline is owned by Kano-born business mogul and oil magnate, Alhaji Auwalu Abdullahi Rano, otherwise known as A.A.
Rano is eager to see his airline begin to fly passengers to various destinations before the year runs out. The journey, which began in late 2019 with N500 million pumped into it, however, experienced some unavoidable hiccups along the line, including difficulty in getting the Air Transport Licence, which was initially applied for in 2020 to operate scheduled and non-scheduled passenger and cargo services within and outside Nigeria.
In November 2020, the company advertised for key personnel, including engineers. Unfortunately the dream to begin flying that year did not happen. The licence may have been granted to Rano as it recently acquired four EMB-145LRs aircraft to boost its fleet.
Ironically, findings reveal that four E145LRs aircrafts were deregistered from the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aircraft registry on February 23, 2022, for export to Nigeria. The aircrafts are alleged to be the ones bought by Rano Air, which has its headquarters in Kano State.
A successful businessman, Auwal Rano is the Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of A.A. Rano Group is made up of Rano Oil and Gas companies, Nicabon Petroleum, Dan Kano Oil and Chemicals, A.A Rano LPG, Ibal Petroleum da kuma Centra Oil limited company.
He also owns A.A Rano Transport and A.A Rano Farms. He started out running an ice block and groundnut oil business including other local items but seeing how lucrative the oil and gas business is, he abandoned his ice block and groundnut oil business for it in 1994 and shortly after, floated his first petrol station in Kano and later, Zaria. Rano owns and operates an oil depot in Ijegun area of Lagos State that can store about 60 million litres of fuel, which is then distributed to his manor houses and sold to other traders. In 2015, he delved into Liquefied Petroleum Gas, in 2015 with outlets in Lagos and plans to own a mega plant in Kano. He owns a truck garage in Ogere, Ogun State as well as about 350 trucks capacity truck garage in Ore, Ondo State.
He is the founder of the Islamic Darul Sunnah, located in Kano. At this centre, Islamic education is being taught, including seminars and programmes on Islam. He is also a philanthropist and distributes a portion of his wealth via his foundation, A.A Rano Foundation, a foundation that supports students with tuition fees, uplifts public schools and pays patients the cost of treatment or surgery. During Ramadan every year, he lowers the price of oil at his petrol stations for the benefit of the ordinary Nigerian.
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