Former minister faults airports concession approach

A former Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka has faulted the concession approach embraced by the federal government through the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) and Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) describing the approach as a ploy to take the best part of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and give it to private investors who may not have the wherewithal to handle it.

Speaking during a virtual stakeholders’ meeting to update on the concession of four international airports across the country, Chidoka compared the ongoing concession process to what he said transpired in the power sector where the discos now lacked the funding to even meter the customers but constantly blame government.

Harping on state-capitalism as an answer, Chidoka said instead of clustering airports into zones, that government should make it a company and selling 51 per cent to a concessionaire who will run the airports instead of handing over money spinners to a private sector that may not have enough to run these terminals.

“I want to speak as a Transport expert that is what I studied and have been doing and I want to speak as a Nigerian before I start talking about partisan politics. Number one issue is that I fundamentally disagree with the ICRC and the BPE on the approach of the concession and my fundamental disagreement is that the federal government has no business in some of these activities like management of terminal buildings but it is what it is, we have those responsibilities and the FG has been discharging it.

“Therefore, my approach is that the first thing I think we should have done is corporatise, that is, turn these terminals in blocks of terminals, Lagos Zone into a company owned only by FAAN and make FAAN a regulator that FAAN would be the regulatory agency of the terminal buildings which will be part of their responsibility and the responsibility of the aeronautical side of it would be handled by a department in FAAN while FAAN serves as a regulator of airports.

“So if we take the Lagos airport zone and take the airports in Akure and the Airports in Ibadan and rope it together and make it a company then we can sell 51 per cent of that to a concessionaire to come and run the airports and let the Nigerian state, either the state governments that ran the airports before they took it over, the airport workers or unions have shares so that  if the airports are successful tomorrow we can sell our shares in the stock market without having to go back to any concessionaire.

Defending his position, the former minister stated “Now the reason why I said this is imagine what it would have been if the FG granted MTN a 51 per cent stake in a concession to do mobile telephones, our 49 per cent equity in MTN today would have been worth the price in gold so I believe in state-capitalism, I think the minister have been sold to BPE, they want to take the best in FAAN and give it to the private sector

“The problem of Africa is lack of private capital, if you take these airports just as you did to discos and give it to private companies just like you did to the disco companies, the 80 per cent given to the private sector they have not been able to afford metering to buy meters they don’t have the wherewithal to meter customers and they keep blaming government for shifting the goalpost.

He advised the present Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika to always seek counsel of his predecessors saying there possess a lot of wealth of experiences he can draw from.

 

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