Nnaji Nnolim is the Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Aviation. In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE, during the committee’s last visit to Lagos airports, he speaks on how a ten-year development plan can help address aviation infrastructure in Nigeria, the position of the committee on airport concessions and national carrier.
After your visit to the airport, what is your impression?
Basically, after our oversight, which is also part of our legislative responsibilities, we visited the agencies and tried to find out their needs and challenges and how we can come in to assist as legislators. Fortunately, also, before now, Mr President submitted bills for amendments, we have them and by early next year, we will start public hearing of all those bills and try and much as possible to do it fast and get them ready for passage. We are going to work with our senate counterpart to make sure we are ready for passage of the bills. The oversight was quite interesting and it gave us an idea of what is happening in the aviation industry.
When you are inside the airport, you see a lot of things that you may not be able to see outside. Most times, you see the non-aeronautical aspects of the industry. Now, we have an opportunity to see the aeronautical aspects that involves Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), FAAN, airside and all the equipment like the total radar coverage, the control towers, runways, air field lightening, Instrument Landing System, (ILS) and other equipment they have. They are rebranding and doing a lot of work. Now we have passed the budget and from next year, we will start engaging them in full oversight of what we are going to do with the budget that we approved for them. We are going to work closely with the ministry and the agencies to make sure that they do what we passed for them.
What is the position of the committee on airport concessions?
The issue of concessions have been a hear-say because officially we have not seen any document on concession. We just hear it like other people that there will be concessions. So, until we get the documents and study it at the committee level and the entire national assembly, then we can talk about concession.
Is this the same situation with the national carrier project?
This is the same situation. We do not act on hear-say. We act based on documents available to us and that is why we cannot really comment on it. However, I can speak as a person but because I am chairman of House of Committee on aviation, I will not like to speak as a person. I will rather like to speak as an authority.
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Have you been updated as a committee on the second runway for Abuja airport?
Not yet. No documents have been made available to us on the second runway but there is also a need for a second runway. Officially, it is always better for such issues to be handled based on the available documents. On the issue of second runway, we have it in the budget and there are some funds for it in the budget but I’m also aware that that particular amount may not be able to execute the project fully.
What is the situation with the Enugu airport? I hear that the land issues will probably delay the completion of the airport?
This is not true. The state government is doing a lot on that issue. I can tell you that the land cannot be a problem because the custodian of land is the government and the governor has said it many times that whatever land is needed to get the Enugu airport runway back, he will provide. Work is on-going. The minister never said the delivery date is April next year. When minister came for budget defence, he said if the fund is available, the runway will be complete before Christmas but because the funds didn’t come out as agreed, the minister now said the runway will be ready before the Easter season. He did not specify the month, but I believe that the Enugu airport runway will be ready March, 2020.
What are your significant take-away from your last three months tour of the airport?
The aviation industry is very critical and the funds in the budget cannot solve the problem we have and the Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) of FAAN and other agencies cannot solve the problem. And you recall that FAAN and other agencies remit 25 percent IGR to federal government and we are asking that instead of remitting the 25 percent to federal government, they can create a consolidated account where this 25percent will be remitted into and form a committee and from that 25 percent, they do a 10-year developmental plan, where they can list projects that they can do for 10 years because if you look at it, one of the problems we are having is that when a particular MD comes in, he will want to do a project and by the time he leaves and another MD comes in, the person will want to do another project. But if we have a 10-year developmental plan, it will continue. That is why we are saying that we should create a 10-year plan for aviation infrastructures.
This is very critical considering the fact that the roads are part and there is insecurity. So, the airport is the next port of call. If you look at any investor coming into Nigeria, the first port of call is the airport. The environment of the airport will determine how much they can invest and how serious they think the country is. If the airport is good, they can double their investment but if the airport is not looking good, they can go back with their money or cut the amount they want to invest. It is a major issue and I think airport development should be a major concern for Nigeria and not just for the aviation industry. It should be a concern for federal government because it is going to boost our economy and create employment.
There are a lot of support services at the airport. Most countries are developing the non-aeronautical aspects of the airport and this is where you have the hotels, offices, meeting rooms, shops, malls and car parks amongst others. So with these, you can be sure that they can double their investments and whatever they are getting. We need federal government to put a lot of money in aviation. Everything in the industry is expensive because they are all off-shore components, therefore they are dollar based. So, the federal government needs to develop the infrastructure. Investors in the industry don’t invest in non-aeronautics. They can invest in airplanes but government should get involved in developing the critical infrastructures.
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What are the assurances that the promise you have made to assist FAAN, NAMA and AIB and ensure that the infrastructures in the sector are upgraded?
If you understand our positions, we have had committees before and they have never talked about creating this 25 percent remittance. This is our campaign and what we think will be the best way to go. We will continue to put pressure. We will bring it up and lobby at the national assembly and we will also get the ministry to come into it fully and push it. Outside this, the IGR is not enough, the budgetary allocation is not enough because it is not only aviation that we have in Nigeria. We need to look at other sectors and how to increase their budget and one of such ways is for federal government to invest that 25 percent in critical infrastructures. We also need to amend some bills because if you look at those bills, some have not been amended for several years. So the bills need to be amended for them to conform to the new standard.
There has been this lingering problem between FAAN and the concessionaires at the airport over the contractual agreements to the extent that people are running away from investing in aviation because they are accusing federal government of not honouring agreements. What are you looking at doing to address this?
As legislators, once we have cases in court, we don’t comment. What we can do as legislators is to intervene. We are not going to take side at the moment because the matter is in the court. We can intervene between FAAN, Bi-Courtney and others but we cannot comment fully on that. I know that it is a very huge burden on FAAN because they provide a lot of facilities and support services to Bi-Courtney and something needs to be done.
