The Managing Director of the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Engineer Tayib Odunowo, has said the proposal to exempt government agencies from the Transparency Single Account (TSA) would be a welcome development as this would help NAMA to manage its resources well.
Odunowo who said this during an interactive session with the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) over the weekend, stated that NAMA has projects to deploy but for the challenge of funding.
Adding that the Agency is bleeding due the huge debts that airlines are yet to remit to its account, he pointed out that NAMA has no intervention from the federal government unlike before when it got intervention for special projects.
“Now, NAMA is 100 per cent self-funded and even with those funds we are losing 40 per cent to the federation account.
“If that could occur (TSA removal), honestly we would thrive and that is why we have been asking for this 40 per cent removal because it is really affecting us.”
On issues of debts, he said “we’re bleeding, we’re being owed a lot,” while also disclosing that NAMA raised its charges last 10 years ago.
“We have issues of debt. Let me paint a picture for an hour operation in Ilorin Airport; the charge is N50, 000. They don’t have power and so we run on generators. That cost is about N500, 000 per hour given what it powers.”
“Now we have not talked about the manpower whose time is extended; the ATCs, firefighters and all other technical people. The N50, 000 charge for that extension is worth it?” he asked.
Odunowo however, said he has introduced a business process re-engineering in the Agency since his assumption of office a few months ago.
He regretted that there is no proper synergy in the industry and among the agencies, disclosing that he is working on a synergy with the Director of Civil Aviation Authority
The Managing Director also disclosed that he has started building synergy among personnel of the organisation and has constituted a projects review committee to review NAMA’s close to 20 ongoing projects across the country.
He further said that a Controller-to-Pilot information sharing forum has been created so that NAMA management now interacts with pilots across the country.
Reeling out more of the challenges, he said Nigeria needs automation especially in this era of airspace modernisation, “Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) need automation most.
“In NAMA, we want to capitalise on Information Technology,” he said.
According Odunowo, the Agency is working on engaging on training to aid the challenge of capacity building in NAMA.
Also commenting, NAMA’s Director of Finance & Accounts, Hamza Mustapha, said with the TSA of the federal government, NAMA had no other means of keeping monies.
He noted that NAMA was exited from the federal government’s intervention fund last year while it remits 40 per cent of its annual revenue to the federal government.
He therefore called on the government to exit NAMA from the TSA so it can manage its own budget and revenues
NAMA’s Director of Operations, Mr. Lawrence Pwajok, on his part queried why its sister agency (Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) cannot pay for services it receives from NAMA, meanwhile NAMA pays the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) and the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) for its services.
“We pay a service charge of 10 per cent to NiMet from our revenue and for every training we do at NCAT we pay. We can’t see why our sister agency FAAN cannot pay for services provided for airports.” he said.