December 7 every year is the International Civil Aviation ICAO Day.
Every third year, the organisation announces a theme to celebrate the day, so this year, ICAO has announced the theme for the D-day from 2020 till 2023 to be ”Advancing Innovation for Global Aviation Development”.
In this interview, Director General, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Capt. Musa Nuhu in this interview speaks on some of ICAO’s programmes in Africa and Nigeria to promote safety and security.
How has ICAO assisted Nigeria Aviation industry to grow in the area of safety and security?
On November 1st was the 95th anniversary of the first flight to land in Nigeria, so aviation in Nigeria is 95 years, 20 years before ICAO was formed.
The first flight landed in Kano race course November 1st, 1925. As the issue of ICAO, as you all know the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, is the United Nation’s body that deals with international civil aviation and it was formed after the Chicago Convention in 1944.
What ICAO basically does, it develops standards and recommended practices that gives guidelines to States for implementation, developing their own regulations and their main areas are safety, security and of recent we have environmental protection and other stuff like cyber-securities, drones and things that are emerging technology.
ICAO has specialized programmes for Africa that is what is called the AFI plan and AFI set 4. AFI plan mostly deals with safety, airspace management, airport development and infrastructure development, and AFI set 4 are basically security matters and facilitation matters. With these two ICAO regional programmes for Africa with the efforts of the African Civil Aviation Commission based in Dakar have really helped to implement and improve safety in Africa significantly, yes we still have issues but the statistics have showed significant development Africa.
In some areas some countries are still below standard, world average but many countries have met world average and all above average, so it is improving. At the end of the last ICAO 40th Assembly last year, I was selected the chairperson of the AFI plan unfortunately before I could resume and settle down I was recalled back to Nigeria to resume as the DG so I had to handover to my colleague from another country to take over as the chair AFI Plan but we are always in consultation and we are working with them to really improve safety matters.
With these plans put in place by ICAO for the world, how has Nigeria as a country benefited from these arrangements by ICAO?
Well, we have complied with a lot of ICAO’s Standards and Recommended Practices and you have what you call the 8 critical elements of safety oversight and one of them is primary legislation which is exactly what we are doing in the National Assembly review of the Civil Aviation Act, that’s the primary legislation, then the second one is the secondary regulations, that’s our own regulations and the civil aviation Act will give us the mandate to regulate the industry that would come and review our regulations to ensure it is within the mandate given by the National Assembly and signed by the government in law.
The critical element three is the establishment of the NCAA so we have reached and met other five, Nigeria has significantly benefited in a lot of ICAO programmes and the AFI Plan, the AFI set 4, the APEC, which my colleague just had a meeting with them, so we participate and we do have a lot of programmes like before our audit, the ICAO Regional Office will come and audit us, the do a mock audit to see where we might have areas that require improvement or areas of weaknesses, and we will work on that, so we have benefited and Nigeria has been a member of ICAO non-stop since 1962.
In addition to that, Nigeria has been a member of ICAO Council which is the Governing Body of ICAO, only 36 States out of the 194 member states are members of the Council and every 3 years, there is a reelection of the Council members and Nigeria has been successfully retained its seat over the last 18 elections every 3 years since 1962 and we are in a good position with ICAO.
The immediate past president of ICAO, was a former director with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Dr. Bernard Aliu, he was President for two terms, he just finished his term last December, so Nigeria and ICAO has a good connection.
