2 years of Buhari: Expert tasks FG

The Federal Government has been urged to concession only the non aeronautical facilities and infrastructure such as the passengers and cargo terminal buildings, aircraft aprons, car parks and toll gates.

Giving the advise, the Managing Director of Centurion Aviation Security, Group Captain John Ojikutu (retired) while speaking on the two years of the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration, said the two-year period has opened the decays and the decadence in the country’s aviation sector which he said for too long had been shielded from the public view.

According to Ojikutu, it has become a public knowledge that a lot of the private airline operators have been living on bank loans and government intervention funds yet they remained in acute debts to the service providers.

“They get concession on custom duties on aircraft importation and spares and on foreign exchange rate, yet they are indebted to banks, insurance, staff salaries in multiple arrears. In all these, they sell tickets on cash basis and not on credit; the question to ask is, what do these airlines do with their earnings?

“In spite of the indebtedness of these airlines to the government, service providers and invariably the low revenue accrued to government, it has been able to sustain operations in the sector. The Abuja airport that account for about 35 per cent of air and passengers traffic whose runway that needed to have been  repaired seven years ago was repaired within six weeks.

“Similarly, many navigational aids and runway approach aids that needed calibration and had exceeded their tolerance emergency were calibrated and have been kept serviceable to sustain operations.

“Generally, what we have seen before now were private airlines that were single ownership and poorly managed feeding on public funds to survive. They all collapsed when there is no longer lifeline from government vault.”