The federal government’s accomplishments over the previous seven years have been dubbed “indelible” by the Nigerian aviation industry union, but they are concerned that the planned demolition of three of its agencies’ offices in Lagos will nullify all of those achievements.
According to Sen. Hadi Sirika, the minister of aviation, and other chief executive officers (CEOs) in different agencies, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has achieved unquestionable success, according to Comrade Ocheme Aba, the general secretary of the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN).
In recent years, he claimed, massive modernization projects and programs had been completed at the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), among other organizations. However, the large footprints may not be visible to the general public.
In addition to improving flying experiences, he said, these projects being carried out by the various agencies have had a significant impact on the country’s human capacity development.
So, we would like to officially acknowledge the significant impact the Muhammadu Buhari Administration has had on Nigeria’s aviation sector. The advancements made in the last seven years thanks to the efforts of the aviation minister and agency CEOs are indescribable.
These accomplishments have had a substantial impact on human capacity development and safety, in addition to significantly improving flying experiences in Nigerian airspace. Dispassionate industry insiders are unable to help but applaud these efforts, which go above and beyond anything previously seen in the sector.
The major problem: Aba, however, expressed regret that these accomplishments would be undone by the scheduled demolition of the NCAA, FAAN, and NAMA offices in Lagos, which until June 2020 served as the organization’s headquarters.
He further stressed that the minister’s purported concession of the four airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Port Harcourt was another action that would undermine the aspirational goals of the aviation plan, which were presented to industry stakeholders in the final quarter of 2015.
Aba said that the minister’s activities around the road map’s execution had caused several industry stakeholders to harbor doubts.
For instance, he said that significant decisions and actions pertaining to the projects were made outside of the ICRC’s formal body, the project delivery group in which the unions were represented.
He claimed that such problematic acts included the hiring of transaction advisers and the approval of all project business cases without the participation of all stakeholders.
He continued by saying that the unions have persistently and vehemently opposed the notion ever since the government suggested the concession of the four major airports, even after the public release of the draft business case.
“We unearthed several booby traps, outright falsehoods, and deliberate manipulation of facts to skew the transaction against the interest of Nigeria, which we communicated to the minister and other arms of government,” he alleged
For instance, Aba claimed that the minister increased the concession’s reach to include the areas around the terminals and FAAN housing estates without accounting for them in the asset appraisal.
He also stated that the terminals did not require any more expenditures for the anticipated duration of the concession, but he criticized the minister for establishing “humongous investment budgets” for prospective concessionaires without any actual justification.
Besides, the union leader accused the minister of arbitrarily fixing the profit-sharing ratio (60:40) in favor of the concessionaire, adding that the government was also silent on labor issues, among others.
