The Federal Government allegedly plans to scrap the Ministry of Aviation and make it a department in the Ministry of Transport.The merger plan has become a subject of heated debate amongst aviation industry experts and stakeholders. KELVIN OSA OKUNBOR reports.Nigeria is among a few countries that have aviation as a separate ministry. Other countries, such as United States, Britain, Canada, and South Africa have their aviation ministries subsumed under the ministry of transportation. Also, continental and regional economic bodies, including the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have, over the years, urged member – states to put their aviation sector under the transport ministry. This, the economic bodies argued, would make room for cohesive planning on all modes of transportation.
They also argued that aviation as a unique industry requires technocrats and seasoned professionals to run, not politicians and civil servants who are not abreast with issues related to negotiation for bilateral air services agreements, airport safety and security and other developments in the sector that requires expertise. In the opinion of such continental bodies, the arrangement allows governments design a blueprint, marshal plan or roadmap for transportation that is inclusive of all modes.
However, despite the obvious benefits of putting aviation under the ministry of transport, attempts by the Nigerian authorities to heed the counsel, which will ultimately lead to the closing down of the avition ministry and make it a department in the ministry of transport are causing disquiet in the industry. The Nation learnt that opinions are sharply divided over the plan.
Push for merger intensifies
For Head of Strategy at Zenith Travels Limited, Mr Olumide Ohunayo, scrapping the ministry is long overdue. He argued that unless the ministry is scrapped, the bottlenecks and bureaucracy that constitute stumbling blocks to accelerated growth of the industry would remain. He, therefore, urged the government to toe the line adopted by other countries, which have ministry of transport and not aviation. He said: “We need to scrap the ministry, strengthen the agencies by respecting their respective Acts with little or no interference.”
Former President of Aviation Roundtable, Captain Dele Ore, also thinks so. Ore described the aviation ministry as one of the major problems of the industry. A former Secretary General of the Aviation Roundtable, a platform of industry stakeholders, Mr Sam Akerele, agreed with Ore on the call for the scrapping of the ministry.
He said: “Nigeria cannot operate aviation in isolation. The ECOWAS Parliament in 2000 recommended that member – states should not appoint ministers to preside over aviation. The aviation ministry should be scrapped while the Ministry of Transport should supervise the various segments of transportation.”
Indeed, the planned merger is in line with the decision reached by the ECOWAS Parliament in 2000. ECOWAS recommended that member-states should not appoint ministers to preside over aviation, stating that rather, it recognises a minister of transport to be in charge, with specialists in various segments of transportation, including aviation.
The agitation is not new. In 2007, aviation was fused with transportation with a junior minister in charge of air transport appointed to oversee its affairs. A source, however, hinted that the model to be adopted in the new arrangement will see a substantive minister oversee the transport ministry but a department for aviation is to be created to be headed by a director general or secretary. Aviation agencies are to be managed by directors as against the current arrangement where managing directors are overseeing their affairs.
Ore noted: “What ECOWAS Parliament is proffering is very sound. And if we are leading the organisation in this sub-region, we are supposed to be taking positive steps. Not only did we make moves, we made presentations to the President at that time, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.” He said the ECOWAS Parliament knew the peculiarity of the sub-region before recommending it. “And I keep saying that we need to look at that, but many selfish Nigerians will want the status quo to remain so that they can have a place to carry their bag to look for contracts,” he stated.
The argument is in sync with the one canvassed by a civil society representative in the aviation sector, Comrade Abdulrasaq Siedu. He said the scrapping of the ministry of aviation would help the sector move forward. He argued that the ministry, through undue interference and policy inconsistency, has contributed significantly to the slow growth of the aviation sector. He, therefore, said, “The aviation ministry should be scrapped outright to whittle down the interference in the duties of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and allow it to carry out its obligations and oversight functions without political interference from the ministry.”
He insisted that if government is sincere about reducing the cost of governance, it should scrap the ministry with immediate effect. “We can effectively operate without a standalone ministry. What we get from the ministry is signing of unfavourable Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) that is detrimental to our carriers, impulsive interference in the day-to-day administration of the agencies, and insatiable appetite for spending BASA funds,” he added.
Aviation unions kick
However, the proposed merger has drawn the ire of many industry players, including aviation unions. Most of them described it as the handiwork of a ‘cabal’ bent on undermining the growth of a sector considered strategic. Already, three aviation unions namely, Air Transport Senior Staff Services Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN), National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), have urged government not to buckle under pressure by what they described as a cabal in the sector to scrap the ministry of aviation.
The unions, in an open letter to the President, alleged that the ‘selfish group’ in the aviation industry is trying to foist its ideas on the presidency in a bid to push its agenda.
The unions advised the president to steer clear of the ‘nefarious cabal’, saying: “The cabal has strong interest in, and is the unseen force behind the re-emergent distractive debate about the merger or de merger of the aviation industry with, or from, the transport ministry.”
The unions recalled that under the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the aviation industry and the transport sector were merged twice, due to ill advice from the same cabal under different pseudo names and was reversed the minute it was discovered that the move was retrogressive.
“For us, as representatives of the most critical element in the productivity chain (the workers), we have no particular interest in the merger or de-merger argument. We wish not to be involved in the politics of it. Our only concern is the profiteering that adversaries of orderly aviation growth seek to make from it,” the letter read.
The group further stated that the problem of the aviation industry is corruption and the government’s inability to put the right professionals in the right places. “We wish to state very clearly that we will stand with Mr. President’s final decision on this matter. However, we hasten to equally state that our position and advice to Mr. President remains the same, an aviation ministry with a seasoned professional who has sound managerial experience and integrity and not blemished, with business orientation as an added advantage, will surely take the industry to greater heights,” the letter concluded.
The unions seem to have allies among personnel of the aviation ministry and its agencies who suspect they could be adversely affected under the proposed arrangement. Their suspicion may not be unfounded considering that part of the consideration for the merger, The Nation learnt,was hinged on plans by government to cut down on administrative costs and position the sector for enhanced productivity and efficiency.
Experts, stakeholders kick
But ECOWAS Parliament’s position and those of other experts who think that merger is the way to go has not gone down well with some stakeholders. For instance, Chief Executive Officer of Belujane Konzults, Mr. Chris Aligbe; Executive Director, Centre for Aviation Research and Safety, Engr. Sheri Kari, both opposed calls for scrapping of the aviation ministry.
Aligbe, for instance, described the proposal as ‘a non-starter.’
As Aligbe said: “One critical question to ask is where the pool of professionals to draw from. I think the ministry of aviation should remain. It should not be scrapped. What government needs to do is to strengthen it with core aviation professionals to enable it function more efficiently on technical issues of policy and safety. My only concern is that the crop of seasoned professionals at the ministry is drying up. Today, the pool of highly trained, experienced and exposed professionals has dried up.”
He recalled that after the ill-advised liquidation of Nigeria Airways, which provided the pool of aviation manpower, no effort was made again to create a new pool. “As at now, in spite of the fact that age has caught up with the professionals of yesteryears, they remain the backbone of NCAA whose success is a factor of the input of returnee professionals. From records available, none of the aviation agencies can boast of any record of robust manpower development over the years. The dearth of professional manpower is real and frightening,” he revealed, asking, “If we now scrap the ministry of aviation, is that not more trouble for the sector?”
While noting that on a face value, the proposal is in line with what exists in many countries where aviation has advanced remarkably to global standards such as US, UK and other European Union states as well as in smaller countries with smaller populations and little or no strides in the aviation sector, he said the situation in Nigeria is different.
His words: “We do not have to scrap the aviation ministry because of what other countries have done. Look at India, which has retained aviation as a separate ministry, as an emerging market with vast population and ambitious aviation development programmes, it has found it expedient to maintain a highly functional, purposeful and focused ministry of aviation to drive her programmes.”
Aligbe said the Indian model is therefore, closer to Nigeria than the US and UK models with decades of stabilised institutions and procedures in the aviation sector. He pointed out that a deeper reflection on Nigeria’s transport sector will reveal a comatose sector that is problematic in every sub-sector.
“From road transport infrastructure to archaic railway system, to a revenue- losing maritime sub-sector with its poor port infrastructure, processes and poor corporate governance, as well as very weak regulatory agencies, the transport sector is a story of an under-developed nation,” he argued, adding that the result of the merger of transport and aviation under one ministry will be obvious immediate collapse of the two sectors or, at best, a worsening off of each.
On his part, Kyari said the proposal is totally unacceptable. According to him, Nigeria’s development has not reached that stage yet. “We should have a ministry which supervisor can reach the President and not a Director of Aviation who cannot take a major and urgent decision. We want to increase bureaucracy, the same thing we have been running away from in the management of aviation business,” he said.
Citing Nigeria Airways, merger of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and Federal Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA) concessions, Kyari recalled that previous decisions taken in the past in many areas and championed by many people in the industry had negative effect on the sector.
“I encourage government to do a good study on the benefits of such a merger before going that way again. This merger was done in 2007 during Mr. Felix Hassan Hyat and it didn’t work,” he said, asking, “Why should we go that way again?” He said there is need to manage the industry for now and see what can be done to grow its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the current four per cent.
For aviation expert and Chief Executive of Mulaky Konsult, Majoku Ilaki, the call for scrapping of the ministry of aviation is “wrong and unreasonable.” Ilaki pointed out that forced merger was tried in the past, but did not succeed because it became clear that aviation, on its own, is a big project that needs to stand alone. I strongly disagree with the position because it has been tried before and it never succeeded,” he insisted.
The aviation expert recalled that aviation and transport ministries were merged sometime ago, but throughout that period, nothing literally happened in the aviation sector because attention was on the transport section. “It has been tried briefly, but it did not work and that was why it was de-merged again. The fact that ECOWAS recommended a merger does not make it final”, he pointed out.
To further push his ‘no merger position,’ Ilaki raised the following posers: “How many countries are in ECOWAS? What is the population of those countries? Put all of them together, they don’t even meet the size of our own population. Look at our own circumstances; it is not what is recommended for the Gambia or Ghana, it does not fit into our own system because our population is almost 10 times of these populations.”
Ulaki therefore, advised that Nigeria should look at the issue carefully rather than implementing the proposal immediately simply because ECOWAS and others say so. As far as he is concerned, the proposal is “an ill wind that will blow nobody any good.”
As opponents and proponents of the proposed merger push their arguments back and forth, it is not yet clear what the position of the new administration of Buhari is on the issue. It is, however, clear that Buhari’s government considers the aviation sector as one of the priority areas it must focus on for development.
His thinking, and rightly so, is that aviation is critical to economic development. And as an airline operator, who pleaded not to be named said, there is nothing unusual if he decides to scrap the ministry of aviation and fuse it with the ministry of transportation for enhanced productivity and efficiency.
Will Buhari call the bluff of aviation unions and do just that and in the process probably risk workers’ rage? Whichever way it goes, the matter promises to be another litmus test of his ‘change’ mantra.
