AMCON, NCAA, Ministry receive knocks for fuelling aviation sector crises

• SEC urged to intervene in merger proposal

The Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON), Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Federal Ministry of Aviation (FMA) have been blamed for the multiple crises that have continued to plague the sector for some years.

Aviation Round Table (ART), a leading non-governmental organisation (NGO), who took a swipe at the three bodies at the weekend, traced part of the the current woes in the sector to weak NCAA, which he argued was not discharging its duties as expected.

Speaking with some select aviation journalists at the weekend in Lagos, Gbenga Olowo, president, ART, in a speech, said apart from the random checks on aircraft at the tarmac, the economic regulation of NCAA was weak, adding that the Authority had failed to live up to expectations of stakeholders and professionals over the years.

Olowo argued that a stronger, viable and independent NCAA would be able to gather the industry’s airlines together and seek a way of taking them out of their present doldrums, and opined that the current domestic operators should be merged to two or three to make them stronger, profitable and more reliable in their operations.

“The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) should be the government of aviation like we have it in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States, which is the only government agency on transport.

“Our NCAA is not there yet. The zeal of NCAA ended when Dr. Harold Demuren left the agency. The current director-general is more or a less a civil servant. We need a vibrant CAA that will be able to take the sector to higher level. It is a shame that we don’t have any airline in this country. When we go outside the country for aviation conferences, people ask us ‘where are your airlines?’ We need a stronger NCAA for us to move forward,” Olowo said.

The group also accused AMCON of misplaced priorities in the bailout and takeover of some airlines, querying its sincerity in bailing out of some airlines.

ART maintained that the survival of any airline in the sector did not depend on the payment of debts owed financial institutions by airlines, but funds to increase their business and gradually pay off their debts to the banks.