By Chinelo Obogo [email protected] 07064781119
After over seven years of Hadi Sirika, an aviation professional at the helm of affairs in the Ministry of Aviation, industry stakeholders have scored him low and described his tenure as a monumental disappointment.
At the inception of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, Sirika was appointed a minister of state in the Ministry of Aviation, with former Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, as the senior minister and supervisor.
As at then there was intense lobbying and pressure from most players in the industry for him to be made the substantive minister of aviation. The argument was that Amaechi was not an aviator and may not know the key needs of the sector hence the push for Sirika, an aircraft engineer and pilot to take up the role of a senior minister.
However, eight years down the line, industry experts say he failed to live up to expectations as most of the projects in his aviation roadmap approved by Buhari on October 18, 2016 were not achieved despite his being the longest serving aviation minister in the annals of the country.
Sirika’s aviation roadmap includes the establishment of a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility, an Aviation Leasing Company (ALC); Agro-Allied Terminals; Aerotropolis or Airport City; National Carrier; establishment of Africa Aerospace and Aviation University (Cargo AAAU) and airport concession.
But besides the lack of progress, Sirika’s administration was characterised by nepotism, lopsided appointments, tribalism, flagrant disregard for the rule of law and usurpation of powers belonging to boards of aviation parastatals. Daily Sun had during his tenure ran several exclusive stories detailing how he oversaw the illegal recruitment of so many people into agencies like the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).
Last week, Daily Sun revealed how the NCAA repeatedly violated the Federal Character Act and subverted due process in its recruitment of staff within a period of eight years. Between August 2015 and April 2023, a total number of 280 workers were recruited into the agency, with 84 percent of this number coming from the northern part of Nigeria and 16 percent from the Southern part of the country.In 2021, Daily Sun also exclusively reported how NAMA recruited 35 candidates as Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) with insiders alleging that majority of them were from the northern part of the country and about 18 from Katsina, Sirika’s home state. About four years ago, Sirika was also accused of being responsible for a similar lopsided recruitment into FAAN when the agency needed security officers in all airports especially Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Abuja.
For the entire duration of his administration, Sirika failed to appoint boards into the different agencies, thereby usurping their powers. But less than two days to the end of the administration, the boards were hurriedly inaugurated, and that was after new directors were appointed.
Among other last minute deals, he announced the concession of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, and Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport (MAKIA), Kano to the Corporacion American Airport Consortium.
He also launched, Nigeria Air, an action which caused outrage and was described as a scam after it emerged that the aircraft brought in, belonged to Ethiopian Airline and has already been returned back to the Addis Ababa.
Experts give verdict
National President of Aircraft and Pilot Association of Nigeria, Alex Nwuba, said the only achievements Sirika recorded was appointing competent people as heads of agencies, otherwise the industry scored him zero.
“Sirika said he scored 100 percent in all of his projects but the industry scored him zero expect in the aspect of appointing good heads of agencies but he didn’t let them do their jobs. He didn’t let give them the independent structure to do their jobs very well even though they tried their best. Nigerian Air for instance, has a great CEO that can put together a great airline in the form Nigeria would want to have. But have you ever heard a word from him? Do you know whom he is? Sirika wanted to bulldoze his way to get what he wanted simply because it satisfy his ego,” Nwuba said.
On the assessment of the administration former President Buhari, the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), an apolitical think-tank, said that using Buhari’s campaign promises as key performance indicators (KPI), the aviation industry headed by Sirika underperformed between from 2015 to 2023.
President of the ASRTI, Dr. Gabriel Olowo, in his opening address at the Business Breakfast Meeting which held in Ikeja, said the future of the Nigerian aviation industry largely depends on how the country deals with the numerous challenges currently impeding its development.
The group which gave an appraisal of the aviation sector, evaluated the response rate to the topical issues treated in its past meetings from 2015 and the score sheet showed that only six percent of its recommendations were implemented, while 42 percent are a work in progress and 52 percent remained unscratched in eight years.
Among the pending issues, Olowo said the failure to establish some aviation agency boards as stated in the Civil Aviation Authority Act (CAA), violates Section 29: 1 of the Act as contained in Section 11:1 of the 1999 Constitution in the eight years of the administration. As noted earlier, boards were inaugurated few days to the end of the administration.
Olowo also drew attention to well celebrated terminals and their unresolved issues stating, ”The new airport terminal building in Lagos commissioned by the President last year, has inadequate space at the aircraft apron for parking, ditto one in Abuja obstructing the control tower.
“The light rail line in Abuja does not connect to the airport terminal building either. Were there no plans before these projects were executed? One can only hope the newly commissioned blue and red line rails in Lagos would share links with the airport terminal buildings,” he said.
Similarly, the ART also released a statement, shortly before Sirika’s tenure ended, saying that they could have rated his tenure a total failure but for the fact that he did appoint capable and qualified individuals to run the various departments and agencies under him.
“These astute professionals in our view discharged their duties creditably well in spite of the ministerial bottlenecks placed on their paths. For eight solid years, Sirika appropriated the required governance structure under his personal control by neglecting to appoint the statutory governing boards required to ease the functions of the agencies and parastatals under him. The ART is of the opinion that this amongst other actions taken by the Sirika regressed rather than grow the organisations. His direct control resulted in transactional rather than functional operation of the agencies, thereby impeding their progress and his rating.
“Sirika, through his micromanagement activities further demonstrated the need to scrap the Ministry of Aviation and place the various departments with proper governance structures back in the Ministry of Transport, while granting independence to Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority under the appropriate internationally recognised structures for regulating the Nigerian aviation sector to achieve global best practices.
“The ART considers the last minute activities of Sirika as capricious, despicable and unwarranted in the twilight of the Buhari administration. We condemn the change of name of the Federal Ministry of Aviation to that of the Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace purportedly approved by the former Federal Executive Council. The ART is convinced that the annexation of the underfunded National Aerospace Research Development Agency (NASRDA) into the Ministry of Aviation would impede the appreciable progress so far made by NASRDA under its parent ministry – the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. We further opine that the Centre for Space Transportation and Propulsion whose activities include the sustenance of rapid advances in the propulsion systems and rocket science should not be impeded by the Ministry of Aviation’s terrestrial operations.
“This deliberate attempt to muster the NASRDA under a Ministry shortly before Sirika left, only creates organisational confusion for the new administration. challenges expeditiously.
“We remain skeptical of Sirika’s airport concession program and caution the new administration to take steps to immediately redress the issues. Nigerian airports are worth more than giveaways to friends and cronies. So also is the identified need for a national carrier which ART is of the view should not be done at the expense of our collective benefit and joy. Nigeria Air with the word Nigeria is more than a mere word to patriotic Nigerians,” ART said.