..Want all facilities considered
By Louis Ibah
Aviation stakeholders Tuesday warned that Nigeria’s dream of building a world-class air transport hub in West Africa may never be achieved unless the Federal Government musters the necessary political will to actualise the planned concession of two of its prime airports in Lagos and Abuja to private sector firms.
Speaking on the back of opposition against the proposal, Chris Aligbe and Olu Ohunayo of the Aviation Round Table (ART) told Daily Sun in separate interviews that the government’s stronghold on the two airports through the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has failed to boost the state of their infrastructure to levels that either befit the status of the country or help to unlock its full potential as West Africa’s aviation hub to attract foreign direct investments into the sector, and create jobs for citizens.
The two stakeholders’ views which came against the backdrop of heightened agitations by some aviation labour unions said to be uncomfortable with the decision and are already holding meetings on how to resist the government policy: “If you go round the airports in Lagos and Abuja, you will feel the sadness and pain of airport workers over the decision to concession Lagos and Abuja airports that serve as the major revenue earners for FAAN and we will meet today to find ways to resist this wicked plan,” said a labour official with the Nigerian Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), who declined having his name mentioned.
But Aligbe told Daily Sun that concessioning of the airports was long overdue and that nothing can be better than what the government has finally opted to do about the Abuja and Lagos airports.
“We can’t have world-class airports in Nigeria unless we concession them. This is the only way to improve their infrastructure and ensure that they are better managed. Concession will also create jobs at the airports for our unemployed youths. I only wish we don’t make the mistakes of the past in the entire process while the concurrent adjudication is entrenched in the terms, and concessionaires are assured that they will recoup their investments and FAAN employees assured they won’t lose their jobs,” added Aligbe.
For his part, Olu Ohunayo, an analyst at ART, urged the government to come up speedily with the terms of the concession to guide would-be investors. He, however, decried the idea of concessioning only “lucrative airports” while leaving out the rest considered not very viable economically.
“For now, we do not know what is being concessioned or the scope and this should be clarified,” Ohunayo said.
“And the cherry-picking option being adopted is a far cry from the clustering option, which tags other unviable airports along. But what I will love to see is an international airport management firm taking over FAAN in its entirety and turning FAAN around from an agency to an airport company that will in future invest in other airports outside our shores. Before then, it would have successfully restructured its assets for certification and profitability,” Ohunayo added.
But even as these stakeholders are applauding the move by the Federal Government to concession the airports, they advised a cue should be taken from the privatisation of the power sector, which has not really impacted on Nigerians since the country is still struggling to generate about 4,000 megawatts (MW).
They lamented that close to four years of post-privatisation of the power sector, the Federal Government has injected about N1 trillion in form of bailout to the ailing sector with the most recent being the N39 billion bailout for the Distribution Companies (Discos) for meters.
Some critics of the administration have alleged that government’s continuous bailout to private investors has turned out to be political patronage to associates lacked expertise, technical know-how and financial wherewithal to turn around the sector.
These and many more are some of the pitfalls they warned government to be wary of to avoid similar development in the planned privatisation of the power sector, whereby the national assets would be concessioned to cronies of political office holders against the national interest.
Recall that the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Monday, said the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved the concessioning of the Lagos and Abuja international airports for better management.
The two airports handle hundreds of international flights daily and are considered as the most lucrative in terms of passenger and airlines patronage as well as revenue generation for the government.
According to the Minister of State for Aviation, Mr. Hadi Sirika, the government had found it difficult to achieve its dream of creating a sub-regional or regional hub out of these airports and attract more airlines and passengers to increase revenue earnings from the aviation sector because of the lack of funds to inject into the airports.
But aside the issue of poor funding on the part of the government, there are also concerns over the high level of mismanagement of funds earmarked over the years by successive governments for these airports. The government’s thinking, therefore, is that it is only the private sector that would be able to inject the requisite funds to boost the state of infrastructure in these airports and also check graft in the industry.
“The Federal Government no longer has that kind of money to put into these airport businesses,” Sirika said in an interaction with aviation journalists.
“The present government will not allow these airport terminals to remain like that. The Nigerian airports have the potential to do between 70 and 100 million passengers annually, within the next five years, if the right things are put in place but it currently does just 15 million passengers annually. This capacity can be improved upon to generate more money for the government and create jobs for citizens if private investors are allowed to participate,” Sirika added.