Unions Fault Minister over Planned Demolition of Aviation Agency Buildings

Chinedu Eze

Insisting that there must be ulterior motives behind the plan to demolish operating structures of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other aviation agencies in Lagos, three aviation unions, National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) and Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP) have called on Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika, to put on hold plan to demolish aviation agencies offices in Lagos in a bid to pave way to aerotropolis.

Sirika had last week said that as part of the Ministry of Aviation’s road map for the aviation industry and particularly for Lagos, the office spaces occupied by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) were to be demolished to give room for the ambition of turning the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, to an aerotropolis.

The unions at a joint press briefing at Lagos airport said the plan should be put on hold pending proper evaluation, planning and better timing.

Some of the inscriptions on their placards read: ‘demolition of aviation agencies headquarters must be resisted’, ‘If labour matter is not resolved, concession cannot take place’, among others.

Ocheme Aba, Secretary General, NUATE, who spoke for the unions also called on the Federal Executive Council to halt further approvals on the airports concession programme, and indeed any other Aviation Road Map project, pending a comprehensive forensic audit of the projects undertaken up to this point.

”It is our firm belief that such audit will expose the activities so far to be wasteful of public funds, and to be tilted away from national good. This is the least the Council can do in order to redeem itself, in the face of the accusation that the Federal Executive Council has so far been railroaded into giving consent to bad deals for the Country.”

According to them, the unions recognise some of the successes achieved under the current administration but the failure to deliver any of the programmes in the Aviation Road Map and the rush to quickly put something on table for Nigerians call for concern.

”The projects include establishment of a national carrier, maintenance, repair and overhaul, aircraft leasing company, agro-allied airports, aerotropolis, and concessioning of the four major international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt. For inexplicable reasons none of the above projects has been delivered up till now. It is therefore not surprising that the Honourable Minister is presently in a frenzy in an effort to deliver these projects, being that this administration is at its twilight. This rush to deliver at all cost has expectedly occasioned suspicion and a plethora of missteps which if not corrected will spell doom for the aviation industry in Nigeria, and which may prove exceedingly costly to amend in future.

”We call on the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), and Civil Society Organisations to mobilise all Nigerian workers and the Nigerian people to join in our effort to rescue our common patrimony from the grasp of the powers that be in the aviation industry, we call on FAAN staff and pensioners, and indeed the entire aviation workers, to stand ready for the fight of our lives in defense of our genuine rights and interests, and to save our industry from ruination, we also all on all patriotic Nigerians to join this once and for all battle to tell our elected leaders that our national assets do not belong to the few opportune individuals in government and their cronies for them to share and plunder, nor do they have powers to act as they please over national interests without our consent.”

The unions also called on all firms that are interested in partaking in the opportunities inherent in the Aviation Road Map to tarry a while and not commit their useful funds to the current arrangements in respect of the road map projects, adding that any firm that chooses to neglect this advice does so at their own peril, “for our Unions will do everything rightly possible to ensure that all such unwholesome efforts do not bear fruit until the right things are done. Particular reference must be made to the airport concession bidders and those related to Nigeria Air. We are shouting, “buyers beware”.

”We call on the Honourable Minister of Aviation to put his plan to demolish the Headquarters of FAAN, NAMA, and NCAA in Lagos on hold pending proper evaluation, planning and better timing. We consider that this plan, in the name of the so called aerotropolis, is ill intended, ill advised, and wrongly timed. We hereby serve notice that any attempt to demolish any of these buildings at this time will be met with immediate action of cessation of work at all airports in Nigeria accompanied by public demonstrations nationwide,” the unions said.