Usman: Accurate Data Gathering Critical for Economic Devt. of Aviation Sector

The Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Captain Muhtar Usman has said to maintain air safety and economic development of the aviation industry, there is need fort accurate data gathering and harmonisation. He also said objective cri

There were reports that some aircraft were stolen from Nigeria, is it possible for aircraft to be stolen from the country? We thank God that such has not happened. Such cannot happen in Nigeria’s airspace. In fact, it came to me as surprise when I saw it as the front page headline of a major newspaper, that aircraft was stolen from the Murtala Muhammed International Airport. We are not aware of that. The allegation was said to have come from the perceived owner of the aircraft. The fact of the matter is that there were two aircraft and two helicopters. These were leased under the Cape Town Convention by an airline operator in Nigeria (Topbrass Aviation Limited) and we are also aware based on that agreement. By the way, the Cape Town Convention allows airline operators to lease aircraft at affordable prices. In the past, before the Convention was introduced, people leasing out aircraft (lessors) were having difficulty repossessing their aircraft when there was default. So that Convention took care of that by providing irrevocable deregistration authorisation for the civil aviation authorities where there is default should be able to deregister their aircraft and for the owner (the lessor) to repossess his aircraft. In other words, if the airline that obtained the aircraft does not keep to the terms of the agreement under which he leased the aircraft, the Civil Aviation Authority can deregister the aircraft and allow the lessor to take it over.

That has made it possible for our operators to access leases. It is not only Nigeria, so many countries have signed to the Convention and Nigeria has domesticated it. But unfortunately because of the acts of two operators now Nigerian is about to be blacklisted and this would make it difficult for other operators to have access to aircraft on lease. Coming back to the aircraft in question, the person making the allegation, who claims he has gone to court, should have waited for the decision of the court before he would say that the authority is making it possible for some people to repossess the aircraft that he believes belong to him.We as an authority we have it as duty to protect all stakeholders; not just one but all stakeholders, which include the lessor, the lessee and essentially the Nigerian traveling public. If the person exercised, which is true because we have it on records, authorised and signed and executed an agreement and assigned the NCAA to deregister the aircraft, there should be no court order. NCAA has done the right things and it is to protect the operators who wish to go and lease and to protect Nigerians at large.So, as far as we are concerned, no aircraft was stolen but the aircraft which are no longer under the registry of Nigeria are still within Nigeria and within Lagos jurisdiction of the court. It is also on record that the same operator has been suing and joining NCAA and NCAA has lost a lot of money on legal costs in connection with those aircraft that he claims have been stolen. Those aircraft have not flown for over three years. This is unfair to the system. The owner has not been allowed to utilize their aircraft. The accuser has not utilized his aircraft. The aircraft that is on ground is depreciating and this is making Nigeria a pariah state when it comes to leasing aircraft and I think it is a very bad influence so we should not allow it to happen.

Some stakeholders in the industry question the recent figures on ticket sales charge and passenger traffic. Why are some people questioning the authenticity of the NCAA figures? It is true we published some figures from NCAA. NCAA figures are harmonised. NCAA does not sit down and reel out figures. The agencies includ- ing the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) are also involved and the officials of these agencies and that of aviation department in the Ministry of Transportation form a harmonization committee set up by the Ministry of Transportation. It is a technical committee on aviation data harmonization. The committee also involves the handling companies like the Sky Aviation Handling Company Limited (SAHCOL), the Nigerian Aviation Handling PLC (NAHCO) and the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). It was set up since 2010 and it meets biennially and the figures reeled out in 2016 and 2017, the figures are not so much from the figures that one of the stakeholders who question the figures, Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd) displayed. But the application is different. We don’t assume figures like those critics. The figures we have are derived from all flown coupons and verified. Some from the international airlines come from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and in the case of the local we have electronics coupon, we have copies that verified. As I said, we don’t assume figures of tickets. Ojikutu is claiming N350, 000 per ticket, but some tickets are very low because if somebody is going to Lome for example, you cannot say the ticket should be up to N350, 000. For example, the ticket booking we did today (September 18) on Lagos-Accra, and return ticket is going for N94, 000; another example is Lagos-Singapore , which is going for N322, 500; another one is Lagos-London-Lagos N354, 000 and Lagos-Johannesburg, N295,000. So you can see, apart from one, all the others are under N350, 000 that he used for his calculation and he sat down and assumed the figures. We do not do that. We do not speculate.Also the basis of our calculation maybe different because the figures were given for the tickets both numbers of passengers and movement may not be the same. There are some passengers that don’t pay, the crew that are positioned don’t pay, diplomatic travellers also don’t pay, deportation don’t pay, government personnel movements and some few others, they don’t pay because they are required not to pay. But Ojikutu assumes everybody is paying tax, the charges are not applicable to everybody. And also on the cargo statistics, the airway bill is submitted in accordance with the civil aviation regulation. And the statistics available for five per cent cargo sales charge is not the same as the harmonised figures. This is because cargo data captures the total weight of the cargo which is both import and export. But NCAA is allowed to only charge for the export; so it means whatever is captured probably depends on the amount of cargo that goes out of the country and what goes out of Nigeria is not much. So we need to work harder to encourage the export because we import more than we export. That is why the amount of money earned from cargo is very low. And for the purpose of the calculation of that 5 per cent; it may interest Ojikutu and all Nigerians to know that our 5 per cent is chargeable after the service charge from FAAN has been removed and also the VAT. So it is whatever that is remaining that the 5 per cent is applicable to. That is the basis for the calculation.

The critics say that they want to improve the industry….? My take on all these criticisms is that those who identify themselves as experts in the industry should try to strengthen the civil aviation through constructive criticism. I know somebody who has been trying as a company to take over the business that has already been given to somebody and if he is not able to succeed I don’t think he should come out and start criticising because it is now more of personal gain rather than being objective. As a Nigerian, we expect industry stakeholders to ask for business but it doesn’t mean that because they have not been able to succeed in that business they should come out and start attacking agencies. This is an attempt to bring the aviation system in Nigeria down which is uncalled for. In other words, we expect objective criticism but we expect this to be done dispassionately without selfish or ulterior interest. You don’t criticize an airline because you request for free tickets and they refused to give you. You criticise an agency because your companies applied for contract and it did not meet the requirement, or some other company won the contract. If your criticism is motivated by such pecuniary interest it means you are not a genuine stakeholder who really has interest for the industry. Your interest is your pocket and when you misinform people, using media platforms, your negative connotations go beyond the shores of this country. So you are damaging the image of your country because you did not get what you want. That is not fare to the industry; neither is it fair to the country.

Airline operators allege that Dana is bringing Asky and Ethiopian airlines to operate domestic service in the country. They added that NCAA grounded one of their aircraft because of that. Can you please throw more light on that? Well, an airline operator by name Dana Air approached the authority that as a stop gap they want to bring in an aircraft on wet lease from Asky. They have earlier on applied and got approval to import a Boeing 737 aircraft, three of them have been registered and awaiting checks and inspection to ensure they are fully airworthy before being allowed to come into Nigeria to resume operations.

So to fill in that gap they requested to deploy a wet leased aircraft which is in line with the provision of our regulation under Part G. Now, it is the mode of operation that is not fully in compliance with the Part G. And we saw it

Usman