The non-inauguration of the Boards of Directors in five out of the six aviation agencies has been a burning issue in the industry.
Four years after the President of the Federal Republice of Nigeria, Mohammadu Buhari announced the composition of the Board, they are yet to be inaugurated by the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika.
The need to inaugurate the Boards have been emphasized and emphasized again and again by industry stakeholders and the unions.
Perhaps the urgent need to call for the inauguration of the Boards, is employment of certain group of people into the various agencies who union stakeholders have described as lacking the requisite qualifications to be part of the aviation industry as well as the employment by chief executives and their directors as ordered by the ministry without due process.
The agencies Boards yet to be inaugurated according to the Acts setting them up are the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
Stakeholders are irked that when one man is allowed to dictate how the agencies should be run without recourse to the laid down rules and regulations, it will be ran aground thereby jeopardizing the safety and security of the sector.
But with the Boards, they are of the opinion that as checks and balances certain decisions taken by the Ministry and ordered to be executed by chief executives of aviation agencies without question, will be absence.
To speak on this development is the immediate past Secretary General, National Union of Air Transport Employees, NUATE, Comrade Olayinka Abioye.
THE INTERVIEW
What has been the effects of the non inauguration of the boards in the aviation agencies?
It has been a very great setback, first of all let me say, it is an aberration for five and half years or there about, the honourable Minister for whatever reasons, has refused, neglected and failed to implement as it where a directive from the president of this country. Whatever is grouse maybe, whatever his grievances are, he ought to have inaugurated the board, the situation became so bad that even one or two or three of this board members has either been elevated to being made ministers, one might have died or so but the bottom line is, this board by their composition whether they are for political reasons, whether they are for come and chop purposes or whatever, it is a norm for board to exist in every agencies to serve as checks and balance between the executives and the supervising ministry, unfortunately, the law also says that in the absence of the board the Minister rules.
The Minister has been ruling as a Machiavellian in the house, he is the Lord and master of the industry which should not be so.It will shock you, the number of people the honourable Minister has brought into the system when he pretended that he loves the industry. Immediately he came in, we wrote a petition, he set up a reform body, certain people were moved out of the system because of the way and manner they came in and so forth, their appointment were loopsided, he said he was streamlining, he did it to a point and jettisoned the process between then and now, it will shock you the number of people the minister has brought into the aviation industry from one particular area of Nigeria, it is shocking too, when this Buhari government talk about anti-corruption some of us just laugh.
Why are boards not in place?
It is for corruption tendencies, it is for corruption purposes because a lot of the things he is doing now, could not and would not have be allowed to go through if there was a board in place.
Don’t you think the unions have the responsibility to talk to the minister, make representation on the importance of having a board?
I can tell you for free, my minister is a very brilliant minister, he understands this terrain, he is part of us. It is not as if the unions have not been talking, the unions have spoken but who are they talking to? The man is the judge and the Jury of our court. So whether the union protest whatever he wants to do and he has told us in the past that he is a very stubborn man and whatever he puts his mind to he goes ahead and do it not minding whose ox is goad, so what are talking about.
The onus is on the stakeholders, those who owns the industry because some people owe the industry, people who put their money here, people who do business with FAAN, people who does business with NCAA and NAMA, they should be bold enough to tell this honourable minister or write to the president himself that you put a structure in place why is the Nigerian aviation system not following, the structure, the system, the directive, the guidelines.
Who do you think would have the courage to spearhead this campaign?
Well, there is the Aviation Roundtable, they are very powerful force to reckon with within the system, AON, may say it does not concern them but you see there is not going to be anybody that is not going to be affected, that has not been affected by none functionality of boards in our agencies because they have a role to play, it does not matter the way we look at it, they complain that there are no professionals, there are professionals there and it is not compulsory that there should be professionals. The Minister has been taking people to certain places where they are misfits, so who is deceiving who?
Those who constitute the board, do they have the right to let the President know that they were yet to be inaugurated to start work?
Mr. President should be aware that no board has been inaugurated in the aviation industry because I remember we petitioned and send a copy to the Presidency but you also know that this Minister is a very powerful fellow within the presidency, he is like a brother or a son to Mr. President and that is why he gets everything easy, a lot of questions he ought to be answering to, he is no longer answerable to those quarters, there are a lot of questions begging for answers in our industry because this industry is not being midwife, supervise the way it ought to be supervised.
For instance, we will blame NCAA for failing in certain discharge of oversight functions, it could so because somebody somewhere has already taken certain decisions outside of the NCAA, it happens with FAAN, it happens with NAMA so, what we can only do, is to appeal to his sense of reasoning that we have some period left before 2023, he should do us the Justice, the honour of bringing in people, if there are people that have gone because we are aware that there are people that are no longer there, they can bring in their people.
But do you think the board is even necessary now as their lifespan of four years has since elapsed?
The board is necessary even if it is only one day, let the board be there we will know the board is there, within that 24 hours of their existence in our system, they will have a role to play. There are serious issues here, it is because some union leaders are being responsible and they are just keeping quiet because every now and then and when there are industrial disharmony people complain what is wrong with the unions?.
There are a lot of things wrong with our system conditions of service CoS has not been released in NAMA for almost 2 years, that of NCAA has not been released for almost 2 years, why should it be so? If there is a board, staff welfare is the number one thing they will deal with, when you give a hungry man food to eat, he sits down comfortably and do the job you give him to do. You can imagine a situation where people are supposed to be trained either locally or internationally, they are not enjoying the training and funds have been appropriated for this, approvals have been given by the National Assembly, that okay, this is your budget that you want to do training, this is the amount and the money is there.
Trainings are no longer functioning, in fact if you go to some of our agencies, you will feel humiliated, they don’t have working tools, ordinary copier, photocopier is non-existence in NCAA because I know for free because for a very long tone some of these things that ought to have there are not there, people go out spend hours to do photocopy before they come back to the office to do government work, it should not be so.
There is a burning issue currently in NAMA, some ATC’s are alleged to have been employed and recently undergoing training without following due process.
It is part of the problem that we have said, it is not within the purview of the honourable minister to employ air traffic controllers for NAMA. First, there should be an internal advertisement before external advertisement. The purpose of the internal advertisement is that there could be suitably qualified personnel within the system who will be interested in migrating from their current department or directorate into the ATC, if those people are not in existence then the external advertisement takes precedence that didn’t happen, you will only just see new faces and these new faces when you investigate, you will find out they were just recently employed by his, through whom, by which means, what procedure, what processes did they follow, nothing.
Am aware of a particular fellow, who was also recruited through illegal process into ATC, he went to Zaria at the point of sitting for his exams, he called people, am sorry, am not qualified to do this job, he is not interested, he cannot vioe, he was begging to be taken to another department, it is as bad as that. But you know when we say these things, we are not criticizing the system, we are only saying, this thing is not correct, please can we make it normal, can we normalized this so that the system can function as expected, it is not as if we know like the Minister, I have tremendous respect for him, I love him because he is a very brilliant man, he is an action man like me, and he is a man who says this is what I want to do, he listens to his friends and he goes ahead to do it but to some other people, the pressure group, he hardly listen because foe him, what can we do and unfortunately, there is little we can do.
What does this portend for the aviation industry?
It portends danger, it portends disharmony, it portends bad blood. Because I am an Ekiti man, I can count the number of Ekiti people in FAAN, in NCAA and NAMA and we can also count in quantum the number of people from Katsina state only in each of this parastatals, it should not be so. There is a quota, they call something Federal character composition, what is the number of Katsina people in NAMA for instance, how many Katsina people are in FAAN, NAMA and so on, how many people from the north east or north central are these places, you will be shocked, it is not good for our system, it is like you are telling us that you can go to hell there is nothing you can do about these things but there are things we can do about it, we can protest, we can humiliate this government and it will not be good if we do that.
