Stakeholders Raise Concern over Bloated Workforce, Lack of Professionalism in Aviation Industry

Chinedu Eze

Aviation industry stakeholders have expressed fear that the recruitment of hundreds of administrative personnel without core professionals in the various agencies in the last eight years would undermine output and safety standards in air transport in Nigeria.

They insisted that the lack of competent and technical staff in the critical areas of the aviation agencies may affect the ratings and certification of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), lamenting that while the workforce is over bloated in all the aviation agencies, they are still in dire need of technical personnel who would propel major duties carried out by these agencies to ensure that flights take off and land safely in Nigeria.

It was learnt that in the last eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, recruitment of personnel has been taking place without due process and many of those employed lack the needed competences and most often even the educational qualifications.

THISDAY also learnt that in the rating of NCAA, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) expects that the authority should have enough number of technical personnel who man critical areas that deal with aircraft safety and others, but currently the number of such experienced staff is depleting, while some are leaving due to retirement; others are leaving to greater opportunities offered by airlines in Nigeria and overseas, so similar experienced personnel are needed to replace them in NCAA.

During the aforementioned period, the Ministry of Aviation has continuously employed persons who do not have aviation experience and who could only do administrative jobs in the agencies.

Reacting to this, the Chief Executive Officer of West Link Airlines, Captain Ibrahim Mshelia, said the aviation industry had never experienced a situation where graduates who do not have technical aviation experience were employed to work as administrative staff, insisting that the sector needs persons with technical experience who are prepared for continuous training and retraining to maintain the competence.

According to Mshelia, the aviation industry is not a sector where National Assembly members and other highly placed government officials will give the names of their children and relations to be recruited because it is an area that needs core competences.

“Aviation is for trained professionals, supported by 10 per cent support staff, which are the typist, secretary, media people and so on. That is what it is supposed to be in aviation. I want to say it and put it again, let the whole world hear it. We have not managed the manpower in aviation properly; that is why we are where we are. I will say it again because we have refused to listen to the voices like mine, telling us that, it is only people who have business in aviation that should be there. All those 40,000 employees in aviation is not going to help us. And today we have to pay these 40,000 employees and it is the airlines and handling companies that will have to generate these monies and people fly into Nigeria, and that is why we are buying tickets more than anywhere else.

“If I am flying into your country and I have to pay someone to fly in and out, I will monetise my expenditure to come, then add my profit. That is why Nigerians spend more money on tickets. The fact that we have foreign exchange starvation is not the problem. Foreign exchange starvation is all over the place but our own is magnified by the fact that we have stubbornly refused to accept the professional advice; that you do not over load an aviation outfit with people who have no business there. One, they are a safety problem, and two they are economic problem and once you have two of these things, the economic and safety, they are not issues that you allow to pass in aviation safety,” Mshelia said.

The Managing Director and CEO of Aero Contractors, Captain Ado Sanusi, told THISDAY that recruiting nonprofessionals into the aviation industry has affected the sector, noting that the problem has been there for a long time; although currently exacerbated.

Sanusi recalled that when he was the Managing Director of the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and was working with World Bank on issues concerning improvement of Nigeria’s airspace, the global body had observed that there were a lot of non-core staff in aviation parastatals and remarked that the major objective these agencies were removed from the Ministry was for them to be insulated from political interferences and influences like recruiting non-qualified personnel induced by political officer holders.

Sanusi noted that this may affect the ratings of the agencies, especially NCAA if the recruitment goes against the stipulated core-staff and administrative staff ratio of ICAO.

“The problem of having non-professionals has been there in the aviation industry. The major reason why the parastatals were carved out from the Ministry was to take them away from political influences but we seem to have gone back to that. Some of them, I heard, don’t even had desks and chairs to sit and work. This is affecting the industry. The airlines would have to pay more charges to the agencies so that they agencies will have money to pay their bloated staff. The consequence is that the parastatals are not healthy; the airlines are not healthy financially because they would be made to deep their hands into their finances to pay more to the parastatals.

“Those employed cannot even be sent for training because their recruitment did not follow due process so the best of them were not selected. How can you put somebody that studied languages in NAMA? I think this is a problem the in-coming government should look into. This may affect the rating of these agencies by ICAO if the recruitment did not follow the core and non-core staff ratio by ICAO,” Sanusi said.