The Federal Government’s decision to relocate the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos is creating unease in the country. Criticisms have trailed the decision, putting a wedge on the determination of the Bola Tinubu administration to refocus the air transport space for infrastructure upgrade, revenue optimisation/ industry coordination and other measures aimed at boosting the sector’ contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), writes KELVIN OSA-OKUNBOR.
The global air transport industry is getting worried over signals emanating from the aviation space. Globally, siting headquarters for aeronautical activity-related organisations are determined by many factors, least of which is political.
Thus, it was not out of place that for many decades, the Federal Government had the headquarters of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), which until 1995, was known as the Nigerian Airport Authority (NAA) located in Lagos, the hub of aviation activities in the country.
For many years, Lagos served as the headquarters of many aviation agencies, including the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the former Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), now christened Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB).
With Lagos having the highest number of domestic and foreign airlines operating into it with large statistics of passengers, experts say it is only fitting to have aviation agencies have their headquarters in the country’s commercial/business capital.
The argument, according to aviation experts, points to the direction that coordinating the air transport sector, in terms of management of airports, airlines and other responsibilities is easier from a location where the activities are more compared to a mere political capital.
But things started falling apart a few years ago when the then Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, mooted the idea of relocating aviation agencies to Abuja.
The proposal received a lot of backlash from players in the industry, who described it as another attempt to stunt the growth and development of the sector.
On January 18, 2024, the Federal Government ordered FAAN to relocate its staff members from the federal capital to Lagos. The decision came three years after the authority was moved from Lagos to Abuja.
According to a circular by FAAN Managing Director/Chief Executive, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, who, citing a directive from the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, said the decision is in the best interest of the country.
Since its establishment in 1976, NAA, as FAAN was then known, has operated its headquarters from Lagos. It is saddled with overseeing the operation and maintenance of Federal Airports.
But, during the last administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, FAAN headquarters was moved to Abuja in 2020.
Following the intervention of experts and players, the Federal Government, buckling under intense consideration, took the decision to move the authority back to Lagos.
In an interview, Mrs. Kuku said the latest decision was driven by the need to conserve public funds and achieve efficiency.
She said: “FAAN wishes to inform Nigerians that following wide consultations by the new Management of FAAN with stakeholders, which also involved the unions, it was agreed that this was in the best interest of the Authority and the country to move to Lagos, where it has operated from for decades.
“Those affected by the decision to move the headquarters to Abuja have since returned to Lagos as there is no office space for them in Abuja. It was ill-advised in the first place to move the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all of them at once.
“Having returned to Lagos, the Authority would be liable to pay them duty tour allowance because technically they are working out of station as their official posting is to Abuja.
“The Minister has decided to stop this waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse.
“The other option open to the authority was to abandon the old FAAN building in Lagos to rot away and to use its scarce resources to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of Naira of public money when in actual fact more than 60 per cent of its activities are in Lagos given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports.
“The stakeholders and the Minister decided against that to save the country this waste.
“The Minister has rolled out plans to get concessionaires to build befitting offices for the authority in Lagos and Abuja and until that is done, the authority will continue to manage its old building in Lagos that can accommodate all its directors and senior officials for now.
“Abuja continues to have full operational offices and the authority has not scaled down operations in Abuja one bit. It is just the technical decision of where the authority has its ‘corporate headquarters’ that has been taken without affecting the structure of operations as they are for now in both cities.
”In the near future, when befitting corporate buildings have been built for the authority in both Lagos and Abuja, a final decision will be taken as to the location of the permanent headquarters, depending on the exigencies of the time.
“The Authority wishes to assure members of the public that it will continue to act in the best interest of the public and the country.
“The Minister is committed to taking decisions that are in the best interest of the country, especially as it concerns public funds and will not yield to ethnic or sectional sentiments that will derail this commitment.”
However, aviation stakeholders have knocked the minister over the relocation order, describing it as a misplaced priority.
The pan-northern socio-political organisation, Arewa Consultative Forum, has condemned the relocation directive by the Presiden Tinubu-led administration.
According to the ACF, the relocation of the agency is a deliberate ploy to further under-develop the northern region.
However, the ACF, through its National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Tukur Mohammed-Baba, in a statement in Kaduna last Sunday, kicked against planned relocations of the federal agency from Abuja to Lagos.
The ACF contended that the planned relocation of the agency was in bad faith.
Besides, the ACF spokesman said the northern elders also faulted the recent appointment in the Ministry of Aviation where “only eight of 40 directors recently appointed are from the North!”
“The ACF calls on the Federal Government of Nigeria and the National Assembly to call on the agency to retrace its steps and apply other honest means of addressing the alleged overcrowding in offices.
“Against the situation in Lagos, there is plenty of land in the Federal Capital Territory for expansion of office and other infrastructural facilities and such factors should not be used to obfuscate sinister motives.
“The ACF wishes to remind all concerned that decades ago, the seat of the capital of the Federal Republic was moved from Lagos to Abuja for reasons that remain valid, it is constitutional even more so today, constitutionally so, although, of course, a section of the country never liked the decision,” the ACF said.
Also speaking, the Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, said it makes financial sense to relocate FAAN to Lagos to improve operational efficiency.
“And then the majority opinion is that merit should be the driving criterion for decision-making in the country. The main aviation hub is in Lagos and if the operation’s department is sent to Lagos to be able to manage aviation operations effectively, I have not seen any ill in it,” Uzodimma said.
The governor stressed: “Therefore, if you move the operations department of FAAN to Lagos to supervise airlines, it makes economic sense.”
Some aviation stakeholders have expressed divergent views over the directive to relocate FAAN’s corporate headquarters from Abuja to Lagos.
For instance, President of Joint Consultative and Negotiating Council (JCNC), Mr. Hector Naadi, said relocating FAAN headquarters to Lagos was welcome provided the government could justify it.
“If the directive is in the best interest of the nation, I have nothing against it.
“It is an unambiguous prerogative of the management and government to situate the office in locations they deem fit and conducive’’, he said.
Also, President, National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Mr. Idowu Adesola, said the relocation of FAAN headquarters to Lagos was the best decision taken by the Federal Government.
According to Adesola, Lagos is where major aviation activities are happening in terms of huge revenue generation.
Industry expert and aviation security consultant, Group Captain John Ojikutu, expressed surprise that the decision to relocate FAAN to Lagos was eliciting such reaction and political colouration.
“Does it really matter wherever the FAAN headquarters is located, if not for the political office holders to be using it as fund tracking for themselves? FAAN headquarters can be anywhere in Kano, Kaduna, Owerri, etc to do oversight over all the airports under its responsibility. What FAAN is to the political office holders is the reason for them not wanting the airports for concessions since the year 2000 when the Act for their concessions was promulgated,” he said.
The Managing Director of Flight and Logistics Solutions Limited, Amos Akpan, said the protest against the relocation was politically motivated.
“Inadequate and inappropriate work environment is a serious breach of regulatory requirements for organisations in the aviation industry. Scattering personnel and offices in different locations hinders coordination for time specific deliverables. The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had built a suitable office in Abuja airport to accommodate her headquarters staff. FAAN did not conceive headquarters infrastructure in Abuja. FAAN had always treated Abuja as a regional management centre, therefore, did not provide infrastructure for her headquarters functions. Since the order to relocate to Abuja, FAAN has had to rent offices in Abuja while some key post holders shuttled between Abuja and Lagos.The Federal Government should plan the relocation, provide suitable accommodation for work and residence, and provide work tools that fit functions before the order to relocate.
“In my opinion, regional offices should be empowered to make decisions regarding operations and commercials with well documented guidelines. Financially, it’s expensive to have suitable infrastructure as headquarters in Lagos not used while you rent offices for personnel in Abuja and pay hotel and inconvenience allowances to them because they have to report to work in Abuja. The Minister did not ask the NCAA to relocate because they have functional infrastructure that fits the purpose.The Minister will not order the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) to relocate. The Minister will not order the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology, Zaria (NCAT) to relocate.The protesters do not have adequate information and they are pushed around by politicians. Giving ethno-political colorations to technical decisions will only set us back. We are due to demonstrate compliance on closing of gaps from the last International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audit.”
We should not set traps for failure against ourselves,” Akpan said.
The Executive Secretary of industry think-tank, Aviation Round Table (ART) and Director of Research and Strategy of Zenith Travels, Fidel Olu Ohunayo, described the threats by politicians from the northern part of the country over the decision to relocate the FAAN headquarters to Lagos as not thoroughly thought out .
“When these offices were moved from Lagos to Abuja, there was no threat and nobody was asking for consequences and the cost and rationality for moving it. Again, for me, I think the Ministry this time had no reason going on air to put out a notice in the first place and going on air to justify it. I think that could have been done quietly because for FAAN, the majority of FAAN staff were already operating from Lagos.
“So, the only movement that we saw in FAAN was that of, maybe, the managers and the directors, and you could understand that everybody wanted that huge sum of money to relocate.
And that was what they targeted for. And now if you are asking for relocation now, you are actually asking the same civil servant to make some money again to relocate back to their base. And I think they should not have published it, and they should not have made it something of a drama. It had to be done quietly. Because even before Mrs. Kuku started work as FAAN Managing Director, the last MD was operating from Lagos. He was more in Lagos than in Abuja, same with the one before him. So, it shows where the state of FAAN is, and I think they will just continue in that pattern rather than do this drama that is coming up now,” he said.
Ohunayo also pointed out that the NAMA would also have the same problem because while it has operational headquarters in Lagos with an annex, it has no structure and paid a whopping amount to rent an office outside the airport in Abuja; the office, industry observers said, was grossly inadequate.
“I think NAMA is also another basket case. They are leasing properties all over the place. They don’t even have offices for their staff. They have already applied again for money to go and rent another building, when you have buildings in Lagos, unoccupied. Something is really wrong with our mentality. Do we want the agency to run efficiently? Do we want to save money? Or are we more concerned about the political gains that we have? It is not compulsory. If there are officers that need to be in Abuja, so let those officers that need to be in Abuja be in Abuja. And those who have to be in Lagos, be in Lagos. Why should you go and rent an extra building when you have offices in Lagos unoccupied? Why should you do that? It does not make sense.
“I think we should care about providing efficient services by these service providers, which is a problem till today. And that should be their priority, not the drama of relocation,” he added.
FAAN would save billions of naira in expenses moving its headquarters back to Lagos, he further said.
