A major highlight in the stakeholders meeting with the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Barrister Festus Keyamo, in Lagos, over the weekend was the need for the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to assume the status of taking responsibility of the entire agencies in the aviation industry.
This, according to Keyamo was in line with his plan to sanitise the industry and reposition it for improved performance and contribution to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The Minister who disclosed that he has signed a performance bond with the President Ahmed Tinubu warned that any CEO that falls short of performance would be relieved of his position, disclosed further that the Key Performance Index (KPI) of the present administration will be a yardstick to measure the activities of all the CEOs
His words: “We had a three-day retreat with Mr. President, all the ministers. At the end of the day, we signed a performance bond. I also signed my performance bond yesterday (Friday). So, if you don’t want me to get sacked in the next few months, you need to support me.
“On this side, it is either I get sacked or they get sacked. So, it is a race to who will survive. That’s what I have told all my CEOs, somebody must die first, but before I die, I will take you down.”
On his plan to support the local airlines, he promised to review all the Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) to ensure foreign airlines do not operate into Nigeria in a way that would be detrimental to the domestic carriers.
“I’m reviewing all BASAs and removing multiplicity,; no hopping,” he stressed.
The Minister urged the NCAA to take the responsibility of protecting the airlines and instructed the NCAA’s Directorate of Consumer Protection to have a comprehensive report of all the flight cancellations and delays and make them public on a board to display at the airport detailing reasons for such actions and the step taken by the airlines.
“We’re not going to operate in darkness again. I have set my target and put money for aviation TV programmes,” he said.
Continuing, he disclosed that he is compiling a new bill on what the NCAA should do and complained the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) competing with NCAA. “All the agencies should report to the NCAA and the NCAA reports to me,” Keyamo stated.
“You (NCAA) want a special status on regulation, then regulate,” Keyamo told the NCAA.
Speaking in the same consonance, a former director of NCAA and Personal Assistant to the former Director General of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Mrs. Sosan, pointed out that in the real sense of it when the ICAO auditors come they actually come to audit NCAA. “The agencies should report to the NCAA,” she said.
On his part, the Director General of NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu, complained that this problem of other agencies in the industry not reporting the NCAA has been in the system for long and even got normalised.
However, according to him, this was contrary to ICAO’s standard practices, stating that the NCAA ought to be in the know of what all the other agencies are doing and be answerable to them.
Nuhu particularly lamented the challenge of poor remuneration, saying that the technical staff are inadequately remunerated which is a question mark on safety. As a result, he said NCAA after training often loses them to big airlines who offer mouthwatering pay.
“For instance, we pay an inspector N700, 000 when airlines can pay N4 million to N5 million, he lamented.