Festus Keyamo is the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, in this interview with journalists at the Africa Aviation in Abuja recently he harped on the enforcement of safety standard as top priority while pledging support for the airlines. Among e reeled his four KPIs to develop and grow the Aviation Industry, announcing that the first University of Aviation would soon start to build capacity for the industry.
Excerpts
Could you comment on what is happening here today at the Africa Aviation Summit?
There are two events here today; well the first event as you could see was that one of our local operators, Air Peace signed an agreement with their partners to bring in more brand new planes to Nigeria and I made the point that I am not just here to support one airline, I am here to support our local initiatives generally.
So any other local airline that achieves any milestone, I will always be there to support them. And I also made the point that I am doing that because one of my KPI will would be the support for the growth and survival of our local airlines/local operators while at the same time holding them to the highest international standards for the benefit of Nigerians. At the end of the day while we support them, they must also have reciprocal duty to the Nigerian people to ensure that the safety and the comfort of nigerians are prioritised by them.
That is why I am here today and I have also rolled out all my other KPIs while I am in office. I have set those standards for myself. And that is one, I said that enforcement of safety standards by the relevant agencies will be top priority for me. The second of course will be the development of the aviation infrastructure throughout Nigeria. One of the deliverables under that will be, I will like world class MROs to be established in Nigeria.
We spend a lot of foreign currencies taking our planes out every time to go and line up in foreign facilities to get these MROs done. And that takes a lot of our foreign currencies away.
How soon would that be sir?
Well, we have a lot of initiatives on the ground, not just one. This agreement today is bringing one in, and we have a lot coming in, I can assure you right now. So it will be one of the deliverables under the expansion of infrastructure.
Of course, the development of human capacity within the Aviation Industry’s would be one of my KPIs to ensure that capacity is developed within the industry. We also spend a lot of money training our people outside. So, the deliverables under that will be, of course the aviation university is about to kick off. Yes, the last President gave approval, so the first aviation university is about to kick off and we are doing our first admission this September into the aviation university. So that would be an easy deliverable under human capacity development.
And of course, I also said that we also have to ramp up revenues, while we are doing all these, we must ramp up revenues. For all our revenue generating agencies, we have to optimise their capacity. It is not that we are going to impose more fees on operators. So those are some of our KPIs and we will ensure that we hold ourselves to those standards.
Could you comment on the South Africa agreement?
For the South African agreement, I also said that it is an immediate deliverable for me under the indicator of ensuring enforcement of the highest standards within our shores. South Africa is doing 92 per cent by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), we are doing 70 per cent. And so our agreement today is that, we are signing an agreement with a bigger brother in terms of safety standards in Africa and we are proud to do so. Because we will be sharing intelligence with them, corporation and all that, it means that somebody is lifting us up somewhere. It is going to be a symbiotic relationship, there are areas we are also going to assist them too in terms of safety standards, because we also have our strong points within Nigeria and that is what we did today.
IATA disclosed yesterday that our airports have the highest levies, is this something the Ministry is going to look into?
Oh yes, of course. We are going to have a round table very soon. I have called for an industry round table. And most of the steps we took are preliminary steps but we are going to call for a round table of everybody within the industry. And we are going to look at all of these, it is just going to be one of the issues we are going to look at and I am going to make sure that they key into the vision of the federal government to ensure that we have a lot of deliverables under our indicators.
What is your plan to address the problem of trapped funds?
Well, you heard what I said yesterday, Mr President is very concerned about that, in fact, it is one of the issues we went to discuss in the UAE. And I spoke with the Minister of Finance and the coordinating Minister of the Economy and he has given an indication that within the next few weeks, the Central Bank of Nigeria will be very clear as to the programme within which these issues will be addressed.
They will be paid off, these are not loans, they are trapped funds, they are funds that are there, it is only the issue of liquidity that is our problem. And the issues of liquidity is being addressed as I speak right now. It is something that the President is very concerned about, and that issue, I said that we have addressed it in the UAE and very soon, you will hear from the financial sector.
Is it that in the coming days or coming weeks, Emirate Airlines and other airlines from Dubai will resume operations to Nigeria?
We are working the details out. When two countries agree at the very top level then of course all the government operatives will begin to work out the tiny details. So, we are beginning to work out all the tiny details. I have met with Emirates Airlines before I left UAE, I met with Etihad Airways before I left UAE and we are working out the details. The time frame, we cannot say the time frame because kicking off an airline operation again on a route, it is not that you will go and grab one empty plane sitting in a place. There is no idle plane sitting anywhere, they have to reschedule their flights, restart their routes again, all kinds of things. All kinds of permission will be taken from local authorities and of course, I made the point in speaking with them and I made it clear that they will have to give our airlines reciprocal rights under our BASAs. That is the point I insisted on, and they did say that any spot we need, they will give us too as much as we give them those spots within Nigeria.