…Insists FG lost N100bn in aviation charges
Louis Ibah
An aviation expert, Capt. John Ojikutu (retd.), yesterday said the Federal Government lost over N100 billion in Ticket Sales Charges (TSC) and Cargo Sales Charges (CSC) in the aviation sector between 2013 and 2017.
Ojikutu, a member of the Aviation Round Table (ART) and Chief Executive Officer of Centurion Securities, who dropped the hint in a statement in Lagos, was reacting to a recent statement by the Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Captain Mukhtar Usman, that domestic and international airlines operating in Nigeria sold tickets worth N502.2 billion in 2017.
According to Usman, ticket sales increased by 14.2 per cent in 2017 (N82.7 billion) compared to the N422.4 billion sold in 2016.
Ojikutu faulted the figures released by the NCAA on the airlines’ earnings and passenger traffic, claiming that it was being subjected to some sort of manipulations which needed to be investigated.
He said: “One might agree with the NCAA that not all those who bought tickets could have used it within the reviewed periods and others could have changed their travelling plans and got their fares refunded.
“However, what is very clear is that the passengers recorded by Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) are known as those who passed through the passengers access control and screening points into the aircraft.
“They are those recorded by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) as persons on board and they are those, I believe in, as harmonised passenger traffic figures.
“Therefore, the harmonised figures given by NCAA are deemed to have utilised or expended their purchased tickets,’’ he added.
Ojikutu argued that the approximately four million international passengers and 10 million domestic passengers were those who bought tickets and had expended their purchased tickets.
He said, for instance, if all international passengers were to pay N350, 000 per flight without considering those on First Class and Business Class, this would amount to N650 billion and not N411 billion or N502 billion provided by NCAA for 2016 and 2017, respectively.
“Similarly, if we consider that each of the 5 million outbound domestic passengers paid N18,000 again without factoring the First and Business Class passengers fares, the earnings cannot be anything less but more than N90 billion.