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Planned merger of agencies will damage aviation industry – Aligbe

By BusinessNews Staff on May 24, 2014

Chief Executive Officer of BeluJane Konsult, Chris Aligbe, said the planned merger of aviation agencies would drag back the industry and dismantle the lofty achievements recorded in the past few years. He also called for the urgent appointment of a substantive minister for the sector. He spoke with Chinedu Eze
When the airport remodelling projects started Nigerians were happy, but they were also sceptical that because of the massive nature of the projects, government may not be able to complete them in one stream. Has work on the projects slowed down?

It is true that aviation is beginning to slip out of the President’s hands. The main cause of this is the absence of a substantive minister (of aviation). So I will look at this issue from the angle that there is an urgent need for the appointment of a substantive minister. Yes the Supervisory Minister, Dr Samuel Ortom, can try to do all that is necessary for him to do, but he does not have the full mandate.

He cannot change the situation on ground. He is just holding forth because the President will appoint somebody. It is only a substantive minister that can sit down and say this is what I want to do, this is where I want to go. That is the truth.
I think there is a connection between having a substantive minister and making a pronounced statement about this planned merger of aviation agencies, which stakeholders in the industry have been campaigning against. What is your view about the plan to merge some agencies and what are the professionals in the industry doing to draw the attention of government to the implications of the merger?

As far as I am concerned, the merger should not be allowed. It should not be carried out. It is a retrogressive step. We have made so much progress in the industry. Jonathan has achieved a lot of successes in the industry. Even the doubting Thomases cannot but accept this, but those who don’t accept don’t accept because they think if they accept you will be tying it to Oduah (former aviation minister).

Oduah was an appointee of the President and so whatever achievement that happened under her the first person to take the glory is the President. This is because if the President did not allow it the projects wouldn’t have been done. So he has made a lot of achievements.

This Oronsanye’s recommendation (Steve Oronsanye committee was set up by the federal government to prune down parastatals and it recommended that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency and the Nigeria Meteorological Agency should be merged to form the Federal Civil Aviation Authority) if implemented will be a terrible set back to the industry and to the country as a whole.

This is because it will take us back many years behind. We have had a situation of these mergers, like the one under Nsikak Eduok as minister of aviation. It is close to about 20 years now since that merger took place. The industry complained vehemently about that merger, but Eduok was minister in the military era. But luckily, not long after he left, about four years after, the whole thing was changed under Captain Benoni Briggs.

Bennard Aliu (who is currently the President of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) was his special adviser. That was when they started putting together a new civil aviation regulation.

It was under Briggs they recreated the aviation agencies. They brought to an end DISRAM (Directorate of Safety Regulation and HIRAM (Directorate of Economic Regulation) created by Eduok. Neither DISRAM nor HIRAM worked. When Eduok created them the industry stakeholders thought it was retrogressive.

He closed down the Federal Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA) then; sacked the principals, including the Director of Air Worthiness and the Director General. These were clear professionals that he removed. He created DISRAM and HIRAM and took regulatory functions back to the Ministry.

That was the beginning of the end of regulation in our country. It was already coming up under FCAA but when he did the merger what remained the functions of the airspace management agency was merged with NAA, the Nigerian Airport Authority and renamed it the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). That merger by Eduok ended regulation.

The Ministry started effective control of regulations and that was the end of regulation in the aviation sector. The Ministry issued instruction on regulatory activities. They controlled whatever they wanted to control. Airlines were virtually left on self-regulation; the few private airlines that existed.

During that time there were two accidents that happened before the investigation bureau reached the sites of the accidents they had cleared everything, packed everything that could help the investigation to know the cause of the accidents. They swept the place clean. There was nothing to be used to investigate the accident. And in those days, anything could happen. So now we seem to be going 20 year back in time.

Accidents don’t just happen. They begin to grow. It was that reform by Eduok that started the rot that led to the accidents of 2005 and 2006. This is because it was the 1999 document that was still in use; even though the agencies had been recreated.

The Ministry was still appointing the director-generals. The Minister was controlling everything. One of the director-generals appointed issued Air Operator Certificate for non-existing airline. In reaction to loose regulation and abuse, ICAO took a swipe on the country. It was during that period that the Nigerian airspace was declared one of the most unsafe globally by the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association (IFALPA). The body declared it unsafe at several meetings. At the same time, Nigerian airports were declared by the US as one of the most unsafe and insecure.
Don’t you think that the committee consulted widely before making the recommendation?

So we had a combination of these things in those years. Today, we are going back to 20 years ago. I don’t know whether Oronsanye in his committee ever talked to professionals. When you are doing such a serious job you don’t just talk to the people in the ministry, you don’t just stay somewhere and imagine what should be done. I think Oronsanye was one dimensional in his approach. It was that one dimensional thinking – I had to cut down the size of bureaucracy – that was his fixation. He was working to cut down the size of the bureaucracy so he was trying to join what he could join together.

That is not the way it should be. There were so many things Oronsanye didn’t consider. Now, you take the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) to go and merge. The functions of NIMET are immense. In places where NIMET is saying aviation is just Aviation Meteorology (AVIMET). In other countries there is Agrometeorology, Marinemeteorology, environmental and climate change. These are by far larger functions than aviation meteorology.

So for you not to take cognisance of these and to put the agency under the other agencies is to bring the institution down to the point where all these other major functions can no longer be performed.

What has happened to NIMET is that each success in recent times can be traced to Dr Anthony Anuforo’s measure of independence, operationally speaking. But for you to take the agency and go and enclose in what you call the Federal Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA) is not to take cognizance that the establishment functions are growing so you cannot subsume it innocuously under another agency in other to cut down the cost of running government agencies.

What you are doing is that, maybe you cut down the cost of governance but the challenges you have created to society if you monetise it cannot be quantified. And this makes a mess of what you have done and the objective of your initial intention because you have not saved anybody any money. That is one. Two, I don’t know how much savings you can make. The competences are not conterminous. A NAMA engineer cannot do the job of air worthiness engineer, neither can the engineer in NIMET be exchanged with the engineer in NAMA.
How will this merger affect manpower and regulation of service providers?

The next thing he did not consider is that the challenge we have today in the industry is the dearth of manpower, particularly managerial manpower. You see how we have been moving in the industry looking for who will manage here and who will manage there. Then you create a humongous organisation; we don’t have the manpower to manage such organisation you are creating.

So what is likely to happen is that all of them will degrade. They will degrade in terms of management because no one person will be able to manage the organisation that you are creating.

Oronsanye didn’t even know whether we have such competences to manage what he is creating, which is critical in the industry.
We have talked about self-regulation. You cannot join service providers with regulatory organisation that is supposed to regulate them. So the Oronsanye committee is taking us years and years back and that is why it should not happen. If it happens the industry will dip down again.

All the successes NAMA achieved were achieved in the last few years. It is only in the last few years that a pilot will today tell you that the Nigerian airspace has come to a standard that they can comfortably fly through the airspace and that so much has been achieved. Some were achieved under Yar’adua but Jonathan’s administration achieved so much in that area.

Yes we have challenges with NCAA. Under Dr Harold Demuren as Director-General of NCAA so much was achieved. The only thing is that we got to the position of so much national self confidence in NCAA that we did not know when we crossed the line of self-confidence to complacency.

There is a thing line there. When you become so much self-confident you said everything is going on well. You are not looking at things the way you were looking at things before. That was what happened and we slipped into complacency and then the Dana Air flight crashed on June 3, 2012.

After the crash, the removal of Dr Demuren and the delay in appointing Captain Fola Akinkuotu left the industry rudderless. The industry was not being managed. No matter what you want to say, acting person in the position of director-general does not have all the mandates that a substantive has. Therefore he can only say let me keep forth until a substantive comes.

The Associated Aviation flight crash on October 3, 2013 was clear testimony that you should not leave the director-general position empty for a long time. That is why today, one is still shocked that the lessons of yesterday, which is very recent has not guided those concerned about the recent appointment. It is now about three months that a new director-general designate, Captain Muktar Usman, was appointed and nothing has happened to make him take up his appointment so that he will put a new team in place.

From enquires, by last week the paper of his appointment has not even gone to the National Assembly. The paper is lurking somewhere and that is not what it should be. It has not left the executive arm to the National Assembly where it will be confirmed. Akinkuotu’s left the executive arm early enough but stayed too long in the National Assembly. But this one has not left the executive arm as at last week. So we are playing with fire. That is the truth.
This brings the question of the recent IRS crash in Niger Republic?

I wouldn’t know what happened because that aircraft was coming back from maintenance, so nobody knows what happened and it is not good to speculate. But for me, the earlier we get Usman to take his place the better for this country. Not getting him in place is a toll on the image of this country.

If anything happens tomorrow whoever is keeping that paper should take the responsibility. We have tried to ask questions and we learnt that some people are running around, saying that Usman is not qualified.

It is not true that he is not qualified. If you look at the Chapter 3, Section 3 of the NCAA Act, it states clearly the qualifications. One of them is being a pilot, a captain with 10 years experience and the man has over 19 years’ experience as a pilot. The man has been a flight training inspector. He has been an accident investigation officer and CEO. If you read the two reports of the accidents of Bellview and ADC which he carried out you will see the extent he went to unearth tricks played by airlines in trying to cut corners. He is somebody who has some depths.

It is just that accident investigation report is not used for indictment. But if you look at it you will find what airlines did and where NCAA itself failed in doing its duties towards these airlines. And so he is a man that has the experience you should be looking for when you are doing oversight and air worthiness. So he has covered so many areas that many of his erstwhile colleagues did not cover.

Take Dr Demuren, for example, he was inside out air worthiness fellow. He sleeps air worthiness, wakes air worthiness. As an aeronautical engineer he knew anything you can talk about air worthiness. He was not a maintenance engineer; he didn’t need to be a maintenance engineer either. However, he knew his onions and he followed it, having worked for so many years in that area. But he depended a lot on retired engineers and pilots of former Nigeria Airways because he had to call them in as he saw the competences in those people.

Captain Muktar has flown in Nigeria Airways for about 17 years, flew in Chanchangi for about two years before he went into training. He is a telecommunication and electronics engineer from the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria.

That was in the good days of NCAT, when it was number one in Africa. He has acquired so much experience, so much competence in him that nobody can look at him and say that he is not qualified to become Director-General of NCAA.

The NCAA Act is clear about who is qualified to be a director-general. It even said somebody who studied Aviation Law with over 10/12 years experience. So the person must not necessarily be an engineer.

So those who are holding the appointment paper and stopping it from moving to National Assembly, the longer they hold it they are creating room for this confusion to continue, for people to continue to scheme for the position and begin to look for ‘God fathers’ to toy with it.

But the President has given an approval and designated Muktar as the Director-General of NCAA. Who is keeping the approval of the President? Has the President changed his mind or are people trying to change the name of the President?

A Nigerian is heading the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council; a Nigerian is heading the African Civil Aviation Council (AFCAC), we should set example for other African countries to follow.

[This Day]

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