Dr Lukman Emiola is the Director, Human Resources and Administration for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, (FAAN), In this interview, he highlights what the current management of the agency is doing to catch up with global standard practice in airport management. Excerpts:
What are the responsibilities statutorily assigned to your office?
Essentially, my responsibility focuses on staff organisation, staff welfare, recruitment, placements, general administration, ensuring interrelated processes are adequately put in place, and ensures that all our strategic pillars are carefully implemented as it concerns the mission and the vision of FAAN. The focus and the objective of this management team led by our Managing Director, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, is to correct some shortcomings of the past and ensure that the mandate of the renewed hope agenda of Mr. president is evident from our airports.
The key factor of your office is to ensure round pegs are in round holes and that workers are really at work doing what they are assigned to do. How have you been able to ensure these?
The major focus of the aviation industry is experience. Experiences are derived from proper training and for the personnel to also ensure compliance with the international certification bodies to closing gaps that have been found in various audits. We have strategically focused on a lot of these and we’re taking them, one after the other, ensuring that we achieve close 80 percent personal training per annum. We are just about a year and half in office are focusing very seriously, especially on the critical safety departments, security, and safety operations.
We have made sure that we focus carefully on staff training and making sure that they get the certification that they deserve, essentially for them to be able to operate.
How do you navigate the labyrinth of responsibilities?
We collaborate extensively, locally and internationally, or as implants training, we have trained some of our trainers to be able to take some of these implants and where necessary, we borrow trainings from the international organisations that we are certified to: ICAO, IATA, and all. We have also ensured that we recognise the personnel who require this training, such that we don’t encourage favoritism, we don’t encourage nepotism. People who deserve to take the training are identified.
Resources required for the training are sourced, and adequate timetable for this training are maintained. Our training school has also been resuscitated with the right personnel and our training plans are aligning with what the organisation requires in two measures: to train, also to generate revenue.
Good that you embark on staff training. But what about the tools to work with; are they there?
One of the strategic pillars of the Olubunmi Kuku-led administration is infrastructure expansion, and you don’t put the cart before the horse. First, there have to be relevant tools. There have to be relevant work tools for trained personnel to have their hands on. So, Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku has strategically pursued these two headlong with the provisions of the right equipment scanners: baggage scanners, body scanners, all of these have been procured. They have currently been installed across our airports, and we have tried to make sure that we train our personnel to be able to handle this equipment. That way you’re able to achieve meaningful results. That way you are able to match intention with action. This is our focus, and we believe by the time we are done in our first four-year, mandate would have repositioned some of these highlights in such a way that the general public will come to terms with the fact that we are very focused. Alright.
Any possibility of FAAN outsourcing its technical personnel to other airports within the West and Central Africa region in the future?
The answer is yes, because one thing that is evident in Nigeria civil service is the availability of proven and capable personnel and technical personnel for that matter. FAAN is loaded with the competency that is required for any smart airport operations in the whole world. What they have lacked previously is the willpower, the leadership support for them to excel, and that is what we have brought back in terms of human resources, capacity development, support for initiative, individual initiative that is not injurious to the organization and to the nation at large. And our staff can compete favourably, helping other African nations or asking them to borrow leaf. We have been invited to so many conferences and workshops for us to present papers. I just came back from Amsterdam, where I made presentation at the smart airports for Europe and America, and my presentation has also earned us another invitation to the United States. So, we have the understanding of what is expected of us globally. We have related with people with different experiences globally. We can compete.
How much, in terms of funds, do you think FAAN needs to get it to its desired height under your administration?
Honestly. What I know about resources is that you can never have enough of it. Airports, global cycle for every nation, and there are daily contemporary innovations coming up. And for you to compete, certain equipment becomes obsolete, and they need significant replacement strategy for them. So, when they happen, we have to provide that kind of replacement for them. So, we need more support. We generate more money. We support government purse. We’re looking at government giving us more of what we generate to be able to plough back into infrastructure development.
So, yes, more money. We will need more money to excel because globally, things change every day, in terms of people, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of work environment. We’re talking about the green areas. We’re talking about staff, aviation fuel revolution. We’re talking about so many things with airports. Airports are not just parks where planes take off and land anymore. It has become an exhibition booth. It has become an entertainment hub. Yeah. So, you need more money to be able to achieve this.
Sustainable development goals are all tied to the airports. You see a lot of innovations in terms of technology, AI, robotic Internet of Things. All of these are tied around it, so you need more money to achieve this.
Does that inform the recent welfare boost for your staff?
Abraham Maslow said, when you motivate people, you have already enforced certain kind of behaviour, and our focus on optimal decision of our workforce is to make sure they get what they deserve. And to achieve this, we focus that if we make 100 per cent, we should ensure that our staff get at least 40 per cent from the 100 per cent to encourage and motivate them. The Federal Government increased the minimum wage July last year. As of that time, we are already working our current budget, and we need to plan to be able to check what we are able to accommodate as at that time. That time, we were just six months in office. So, we went to the drawing board. We were conscious that we need some levels of approvals from our ministry and from other stakeholders before we can be able to implement. So, within our calculations, when we look at the numbers and we were able to appeal to our union executives to show us that understanding to allow us prepare and with our very robust relationship with Union executives, they permitted us. We made the promise to act to time and we just have the responsibility to fulfill the promise.
So, when we got all the approvals to implement the minimum wage, we were already in our arrears, and because we don’t want to be socially irresponsible, we went back and calculated their arrears, and when we calculated, we saw that we’re able to break it in batches. We paid staff the arrears because we don’t want to be in debit or deficit with them. We want them to believe that whatever we say we were able to keep; so, we paid their arrears.
As of this month, I think we paid August, September, October, November, arrears to our staff; making four months, and we also implemented the minimum wage. And that gave them a lot of lift. We are also determined to complete December, January, February and March this coming month. So, we just want to prove to them that we are responsible. And when we say we will do things, we’ll do it. That’s what we did.
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