In December 2005, the Federal Government under former President Olusegun Obasanjo set up a task force headed by Paul Dike, an Air Chief Marshall and Chief of Defence Staff, to look into the deficiencies in the nation’s aviation sector. The setting up the task force was sequel to the air tragedies involving ADC Airline in Abuja, Sosoliso Airline in Port Harcourt and Belleview Airline in Ogun State during which 214 lives and property worth millions of naira were lost.
The task force was to look into the infrastructure and level of adequacy of take-off, landing and navigational equipment; airport facilities, quality and quantity of personnel and make recommendations to the government on how to secure the country’s airspace and to point the way forward.
The task force which had as members Tony Elumelu, Group CEO of UBA Plc; Conrad Clifford, the managing director, Virgin Nigeria; Austin Okon, former managing director, ADC Airline; Roland Iyayi, former managing director, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) among others swung into action, bringing both expertise and experience to bear on the job they had been assigned to do.
In good time, it turned in its findings and made recommendations to the government. The recommendations which harped on the issue of standard of human capital, security, safety and infrastructure in the industry also urged the government to disengage all unqualified employees in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and ensure that only core professionals of high integrity with requisite skill levels were employed.
It asked NCAA to ensure mandatory compliance of all aviation agencies and airlines with all industry safety requirements in addition to ensuring that these agencies and airlines produced their safety and security management manuals and that their safety management systems (SMS) were adequate in terms of accident prevention programme, collection/analysis/communication of safety information; technical training and emergency response procedures.
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The task force also recommended that a N32.86 billion short-term Aviation Bridge Finance should be set up which, according to them, should be used for the immediate rehabilitation, upgrading and provision of airport facilities, equipment, and associated infrastructure at Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt international airports, among other uses.
It is disheartening to note that three years down the line, these recommendations, as laudable as they are, remain largely unimplemented. It is painful not much for the apparent waste of the tax-payer’s money in carrying out the onerous assignment as it is for the frustration of the purpose which the recommendations were meant to serve.
We are all the more pained that what happens in other sectors, where government treats with levity issues that are germane to national development, has been allowed to rear its ugly head in the aviation sector.
This sector, to us, shouldn’t be treated like the others because of the safety implications and given the colossal loss that follows any mishap arising from poor management of our airspace.
We therefore, recommend that government should implement, to the letter, all the recommendations as put together by the Dike-led task force. Most importantly. functional infrastructure should be provided at the airports while only qualified professionals should be employed in the aviation industry.
As much as possible, every form and appearance of corruption should be nipped in bud. The N19 billion infrastructure fund alleged to have been mismanaged by former aviation ministers” Femi Babalola and Femi Kayode– and former NAMA MD, Roland Iyayi, will ever remain the industry’s albatross.
We see it as an attempt to stifle the industry given that less than N2 billion out of the N19 billion could be accounted for going by the infrastructure on ground and suggest therefore, that the law should be allowed to take its full course to ensure that those already indicted don’t escape justice.
