Safety at risk as plots, engineers warn against proposed cut to NCAA funding

The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), NCAA Branch, has issued a warning to the National Assembly and federal policymakers, stating that a proposed legislative bill to slash the funding of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) represents a dangerous gamble with the lives of millions of air travellers.

In a comprehensive joint memorandum co-signed by Diepreye Stephen Saburugha, the Branch Chairman, and
Celestine Nkemakolam Chukwu, l the Branch Secretary, the technical union raised an alarm over a bill currently before lawmakers.

The draft legislation seeks to aggressively reduce the NCAA’s statutory share of the five percent Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) and Cargo Sales Charge (CSC) from 56 percent down to 40 percent—representing a severe 16 percent resource deficit. Concurrently, the bill proposes increasing the share of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) from 22 percent to 40 percent.

According to NAAPE, treating this as a routine fiscal redistribution of revenue among sister parastatals is a critical error. The technical workforce warns that starving the apex regulator of its financial lifeblood threatens its core regulatory independence, cripples active field surveillance, and exposes the nation’s airspace to systemic safety risks reminiscent of the country’s dark history of air disasters.

The union leadership emphasized that the rules, safety barriers, and oversight frameworks protecting passengers today were built on painful institutional memory. Nigeria’s contemporary safety record did not emerge by accident; it was forged through hard-won reforms enacted after avoidable tragedies.

“The crash of Bellview Airlines Flight 210 in 2005, which claimed 117 lives, sent shockwaves across the country and exposed serious concerns about safety oversight within the aviation system,” the statement notes. “Barely months later, the ADC Airlines Flight 53 crash claimed 96 lives… Years later, the tragic crash of Dana Air Flight 992 in Lagos again reminded Nigerians that when safety barriers fail, the consequences can be catastrophic.”

NAAPE notes that those dark years forced the federal government to confront a harsh structural truth: an underfunded safety regulator puts lives at risk. It was from that realization that deliberate investments were made into technical manpower, surveillance programs, and compliance enforcement, eventually lifting Nigeria to a position of global aviation respect.

A Fundamental Distortion of Funding Philosophy

Saburugha and Chukwu argue that the current proposal completely turns the original, statutory blueprint of the aviation sector on its head. Citing the foundational 1999 Mamman Committee report, NAAPE explained that the NCAA and NAMA were designed around fundamentally different financial models:

The NCAA Mandate (Sovereign Oversight): The NCAA was conceived as an independent safety and economic regulator. Because safety oversight is a sovereign responsibility that generates zero commercial profit but demands immense operational capital, the 5% TSC was introduced as a sustainable, industry-funded shield to guarantee the Authority absolute autonomy from political and commercial interference.

The NAMA Mandate (Commercial Utility): NAMA, by contrast, was carved out as a commercial air navigation service provider. By design, NAMA was meant to become entirely self-funding by charging operators directly for air navigation and en-route services. Under its enabling Act, NAMA already commands substantial commercial revenue streams.

The legislative trajectory shows a systematic erosion of the regulator’s financial foundation. While the 1999 Act allocated 70 percent of the TSC to the NCAA, subsequent amendments in 2006 and 2022 whittled that share down to 58 percent and then 56 percent to accommodate other agencies like NCAT, NiMet, and the NSIB. Dropping this share further to 40 percent would shatter the financial autonomy required to maintain independent oversight.

The union contends that the National Assembly is diagnosing the wrong problem. The financial strain across aviation agencies does not stem from an incorrect sharing formula, but rather from a massive backlog of unremitted ticket charges actively withheld by domestic airlines. Instead of crippling the safety regulator, NAAPE calls for aggressive debt recovery and enforcement mechanisms to force airlines to promptly remit the passenger funds they collect.

The union maintains that clearing these outstanding debts would provide immediate, sweeping financial relief to all beneficiary agencies without compromising the regulatory shield. Given inflation and expanding technological complexities, NAAPE argues the NCAA’s share should actually be upwardly reviewed to approximately 65 percent

Crippled Surveillance, Brain Drain, and ICAO Consequences

The practical consequences of the proposed 16 percent cut are already playing out across the tarmac. The NCAA is operating under severe fiscal duress. In the last five years alone, the Authority has lost more than 60 highly specialized inspectors to foreign civil aviation authorities and private operators due to uncompetitive remuneration. Furthermore, though a modest review of the NCAA’s Conditions of Service was approved in January 2026, the agency has been unable to implement it due to a lack of funds.

Compounding this is the automatic 30 percent deduction of the NCAA’s internally generated revenue at source. This deduction hits even the fees paid by operators specifically to cover inspectors’ travel, lodging, and logistics for mandatory field audits. As a result, inspectors have occasionally had to finance official safety missions out of their personal pockets, leading to a mounting backlog of unpaid Duty Tour Allowances.