Stakeholders reject renaming of aviation ministry, seek return to transportation
The Aviation Roundtable and Safety Initiative (ART), a group of think tanks in the aviation industry, has rejected the renaming of the Ministry of Aviation to the Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace.
The group also decried what it called “last minute activities” of the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, describing it as “capricious, despicable and unwarranted in the twilight of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.”
The group, in a statement signed by its Assistant Secretary General, Olumide Ohunayo, also noted that the annexation of the National Aerospace Research Development Agency (NASRDA), the agency it described as “underfunded” 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.
Instead of enlarging the tentacle of the aviation ministry, ART recommended the return of aviation to the Ministry of Transportation as a unit as was done in the first term of Buhari.
“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.
The group said for eight years, the minister of aviation appropriated the required governance structure under his personal control by failing to appoint the statutory governing boards required to ease the functions of the agencies and parastatals under him, adding that, amongst other actions taken by the minister, retrogressed rather than grew the organizations.