Poor Airport Runways and FAAN’s Fiscal Malaise

Airport runways under the management of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria are all rundown. Chinedu Eze writes that the poor conditions of the facilities expose flights to security and safety threats

On Monday when the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed and the Minister of State, Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika met with members of Aviation Round Table (ART) in Lagos, Mohammed, who refuted the report that the timeline for the reopening of the Abuja airport was extended, explained that the massive rehabilitation work on the airport’s runway necessitated its closure. For over 30 years, the runway was built no major maintenance work was done on it before now.

That is also the fate of the 22 airports under the management of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). In fact, Sirika recalled that the runway at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa at the time caved in due to lack of maintenance and the airport had to be closed for two years for a comprehensive repair work.

Poor Maintenance Culture

Almost all the runways at the airports under FAAN management are dilapidated and many of them are not fitted with airfield lighting. FAAN sources said that some of the airports that even have airfield lighting when they were built are poorly maintained. Some of the runway lights are not functioning; many with dead bulbs are not replaced and as it is expected that these facilities should be upgraded; “they have to be dysfunctional before concerned authorities will notice,” an official said.

Many of the nation’s airport runways have damaged the landing gears of many aircraft because they are not properly maintained. Some industry stakeholders blamed the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for not mandating FAAN to ensure these runways were properly maintained. But others argue that FAAN needed not be reminded to do its job properly because “it claims that it is an authority, pointing out that the Act that established it gave it autonomy”. An industry stakeholder said that until that Act is amended by the National Assembly and FAAN made to be subordinate to NCAA, there would always be controversy concerning the oversight function of NCAA on the agency.

It is the bad state of the runways that has limited the operation of flights to these airports, especially in the night. This has also led to the underutilisation of these facilities by airlines, including charter operators, who could land at airports at any time in the night if such airports have the facilities for night landing at their runway.

Last December airlines had to pay hugely to be allowed to land at some airports after 6:00 pm. Some of the airlines had to pay as high as N500,000 so that the airport workers in charge of runway lighting, air traffic control and passenger processing could stay back to facilitate aircraft arrival and take off.

Chairman of Air Peace, Chief Allen Onyema said in an interview with THISDAY that, “Enugu, for example, has runway light but they close it on time. So why can’t they operate 24 hours? Why do you make me to pay extra for landing there after 6:00 pm? Every day, during the Christmas period I was paying N500, 000. How many passengers was Air Peace carrying? Just to provide service to the people we are being taxed heavily. So you pay for the service for you to be served, you are not even served: even when they now have to provide any service, you have to now pay again.

“Those airports were supposed to have good landing equipment. Over there in Europe, my aircraft was going to Estonia it was zero weather visibility but the pilot landed. This was because the facilities were there at the airport and in the aircraft. All they needed to do was to put it on auto and the aircraft would get itself down quietly.”

Perimeter Fencing

During the first inspection of the Kaduna airport, after it was designated as alternative to Abuja airport, shortly before the later was closed for the runway rehabilitation, it was noticed that there were permanent routes on the airside through which the host community pass through to the market and other destinations. The airport was too exposed to runway incursion. Although the airport manager assured then that a new route was given to the host community as alternative, last week there was report that cattle was seen at the airside of the airport.

This is not peculiar to the Kaduna airport. Some years ago, Air France flight landed on cattle at the Port Harcourt runway and in September last year, Arik Air flight hit antelope on the runway of the same airport. The reason for all these incursions is because the airports do not have perimeter fencing. No airport in Nigeria under FAAN management has comprehensive security and perimeter fencing.

Aviation security experts have posited at different fora that it is Providence rather than proper security architecture that has kept terrorists and other evil minded people from accessing the critical areas of the nation’s airport to carry out obnoxious activities that could do maximum damage to travellers and others. For the fact that in 2013 a young boy accessed the airside of Benin airport and entered the wheel-well of Arik Air aircraft which brought him to Lagos, says how porous the airports are, and nothing significant has been done since then to improve security at the airside of most airports.

FAAN’s Financial Challenges

FAAN officials that spoke to THISDAY said that the major challenge the agency is facing is paucity of funds. According to them, FAAN does not have the funds to deploy and regularly maintain these facilities; yet the federal government insists it pays substantial part of its revenues to its coffers. One of the officials said that the agency would do better without the interferences of the Ministry of Transport, which erodes its prioritsation of projects and programmes for the upgrade and maintenance of the airports.

“Let me safely put it that FAAN generates about N32 billion annually. On monthly basis, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos generates N2 billion, which is N24 billion per annum. Other airports put together generate about N8 billion and this amounts to N32 billion. How far can this go with the capital intensive projects we have to do?” the official said.

He expressed regret that 60 percent of this revenue goes to overheads and salaries because the agency has over bloated workforce.

“The overhead is so much and with salary they take about 60 percent of the revenues and you know we have very old facilities to maintain. Then we have this problem of overbearing influence from the Ministry, forcing FAAN to do contracts it does not need or require and after the contract they force FAAN to pay the contractors. We cannot prioritise our expenditure. The contracts are usually awarded by the Ministry and FAAN cannot even monitor or reprimand them when they do shoddy jobs. That is why sometimes we cannot explain some of these projects at our airports and FAAN is the only agency everybody knows and we are held responsible for everything,” the official said.

The official however argued that concession may not be a panacea to the problem of the airports, noting that if there are no interferences FAAN would effectively modernize and manage the airports. Stakeholders fundamentally disagree with this view. They believe that as long as FAAN is a government agency, it cannot effectively manage the airports so what the airports need is transparent privatisation through due process.

Privatisation as Option

Although there is general belief that giving out the airports in concession, would solve the fundamental problem of the decay of the facilities, but some stakeholders, have called for caution because of the scepticism that it would not be carried out with due process and transparency, looking at past experience.

But if carried out transparently, many industry observers believe that would be the best option and a good escape from FAAN’s monopoly.

At the last International Air Transport Association (IATA) global media day in December, the Director-General and CEO of IATA, Alexander de Juniac expressed the view of IATA over effective management of airports, the idea of concession and privatisation.

He told THISDAY: “What we say is that we want governments to be cautious about privatisation of airports. We say to them, be careful because privatisation of airports has not led to cost efficient, technology efficient infrastructure. The experience we had from Australia, from Chile, from Europe is not convincing. So we say beware; of course, we understand that to run the airport as operations, privatising or even concession is much better than having civil servants doing the job, that’s for sure.

“Then we come to the process of choosing the concessionaire, which in many countries is based on the man who is buying at the highest price. So it means that the cost increases, at the end of the day the bill is sent to the airlines. And we say in the choice of the concessionaire they always should look at other criteria.

“We favour privatising the operation through the concessionaire with a process that is not only based on choosing the man who is paying the highest price, we say to government, be cautious about privatising the ownership of the infrastructure, be careful because you may privatise a local monopoly that may go out of control. If you do that be able to implement a strong regulatory body. And frankly there is nowhere in the world, perhaps, except in the UK that the regulation has been successful,” Juniac said. He noted that in France it is a nightmare; the state owns 54 percent of privatised airports, “the privatised monopoly of the airports makes very big money 42 percent or 30 percent profit. In many cases we see this type of problem when we privatise the ownership of the infrastructure. The real point is, if we could phrase that in a synthetic way, the appropriate regulation is to find the right balance between public and private interest.”

FAAN as presently constituted may not solve the problem of airport decay in the country; not when government is breathing heavily on the neck of the agency. So addressing the problem of poor airport facilities requires the government to grant FAAN autonomy or concession the facilities in a transparent manner.