As aviation sector awaits Osinbajo’s promise

NIGERIA’S Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, recently took time off his tight schedule to meet with Nigeria’s airline operators and hear directly from them after which he promised to address the myriad of challenges confronting them

Speaking on behalf of the delegation of the Airline Chief Executives that visited the Acting President, the Chairman of the domestic airlines’ body, Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Captain Nogie Meggison, called for a review of the present economic policy of the government which he said was crippling the domestic airlines even as he listed the barrage of challenges confronting the indigenous airlines.

The attention granted the airlines by the Acting President signifies a sign of good things coming from this government at a time when the sector which happens to be among the top contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is in a dire strait.

There is no doubt that because Osinbajo, like his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari, is a man of credibility and sincerity based on his background, better days are surely ahead of the sector.

It may interest the Acting President to also know that apart from the hardship being experienced by the airlines, even the aviation agencies are not exempted from the tough time brought upon them mostly by government policies.

While the sector anxiously awaits the action of the government, it is however pertinent to draw the attention of the Acting President to some critical areas crying for intervention from the government which if looked into will make domestic airline business more seamless and rewarding.

One of the challenges bedeviling airline business which if tackled will speedily transform the entire sector is the continued lack of the presence of a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility, an aircraft maintenance hangar which is one of the worst nightmares confronting the domestic airlines.

For Nigeria, which has the highest number of airlines with its position on the continent to lack this basic facility is a disaster and contradictory to the hitherto position of the government to help transform the aviation sector.

Providing a national hangar for the sector will not only end capital flight, but will rescue the domestic airlines from further spending billions of dollars on maintenance of their machines in different countries around the world and earn more monies to the coffers of government.

Government should not allow selfish individuals to discourage it from achieving this in view of the huge capital needed to establish a national hangar; rather government should honour its earlier agreement to take over the MRO facility already started by the Akwa Ibom State government.

The airlines are presently bleeding through the huge funds expended on maintenance which has been made worse with the skyrocketing foreign exchange rate.

Again, without reviewing the ridiculous over 80 Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASA) Nigeria signed with foreign countries which are to the advantages of those countries and sadly to Nigeria’s disadvantage, any step taken by this government may just be a case of dropping a pin into the ocean.

The issue of expensive and often scarce aviation fuel which is gulping up to 40/50 per cent of operational cost for airlines needs to be looked into by the government to make things a bit relaxed for the airlines.

This government should not forget to allow the various aviation organisations to run the establishments professionally with little or no political interference on them through the questionable employments they make often at the detriment of professionalism.

Obviously, activities in the domestic airline scene and the aviation sector in general are being hampered by all these distractions and the urgent intervention of the federal government will prevent the looming disaster waiting to happen.