ICAO safety rating: Nigeria attains level 3 SSP

Nigeria has attained the Level 3 State Safety Programme (SSP) Implementation Process, thereby joining countries like the United States of America, United Kingdom, among others, in this echelon.

An SSP is an integrated set of regulations and activities aimed at improving aviation safety, which will be monitored through Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) Continuous Monitoring Approach (CMA) after such a state has achieved an Effective Implementation (EI) of over 60 percent.
It is required that states that have achieved EI levels of over 60 percent should endeavour to fully implement SSP by 2019.

Nigeria achieved an EI Level of 67.36 percent during the immediate past ICAO USOAP Audit in March 2016, which is above world average of 63.54 percent.

With this achievement, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) will continue to ensure that air transportation in Nigeria is seamless, safe and secure at all times.

According to a statement issued by the NCAA, Nigeria has therefore joined countries like the United States of America, United Kingdom, among others in this echelon.

This categorisation is dependent on the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), who tracks the SSP implementation process of member-states via its Integrated Safety Trend Analysis and Reporting System (iSTARS).

Member states in tandem therefore deploy this platform to undertake Gap Analysis, define their action plans and benchmark their progress.
Sam Adurogboye, general manager, public relations, NCAA, said consequently, Nigeria’s advanced level had put its SSP implementation process among states that had defined an action plan for all non-implemented Gap questions.

According to Adurogboye, “In other words, Nigeria has completed its Gap Analysis, implemented 43.6 percent of the required SSP tasks. In addition, the country has developed a detailed action plan for the accomplishment of the outstanding tasks with an established and approved timeline.

“In pursuant to the above, Nigeria has commenced the implementation of the SSP processes and has achieved several milestones. These include the completion of the SSP Gap Analysis and the establishment of the Implementation Plan approved by the DG, NCAA.”

Other completed SSP tasks are the official authorisation of the DG, NCAA as the Accountable Executive of the SSP and the designation of the NCAA as the Placeholder Organisation of the SSP in Nigeria by Hadi Sirika, the minister of state (aviation), he said.

The approval and publication of the State Safety Policy Statement, the Enforcement Policy in an SSP-SMS environment including Nigeria’s Voluntary and Confidential Reporting System among others are among the tasks that have been concluded.

The ICAO Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) has recognised the relevance of establishing and maintaining fundamental safety oversight systems as a prerequisite to the full implementation of an SSP.