Aviation Unions Welcome FAAN’s Plan to Relocate Headquarters to Lagos

• Northern group kicks against relocation of FAAN, CBN departments to Lagos

Chinedu Eze and John Shiklam in  Kaduna

Labour unions in the aviation industry have expressed support for the plan of the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, to relocate the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos, where it had existed for several years.

This is as the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) yesterday opposed  the relocation of  FAAN and some key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Lagos, saying the relocation, apart from having negative implications for the country, is also capable of undermining the status of Abuja as the nation’s capital city.

Air Transport Service Senior Staff Association (ATSSSAN), the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and Association of Nigerian Aviation Professionals (ANAP) in a joint statement expressed their support to the relocation plan and described it as a welcome development.

“The recent instructions for redeployment of staff relocated to Abuja is a welcome development. It could be recalled that the unions have on several occasions expressed our concerns over the hasty manner in which staff were relocated to Abuja when no adequate arrangement was made in the areas of office accommodation, infrastructure and other logistics for smooth relocation. Senior management staff were left stranded without an office and working tools while junior workers were helpless, no provision for documents and working files and most worrisome absence of backup for data,” the statement said.

The unions also said that it is their hope that if such movement was requested in future all necessary infrastructure must be in place.

“We are also of the opinion that staff who have collected relocation allowance even though not sufficient should not be paid for this redeployment. We, however, urge the management to make Lagos convenient enough for staff to operate,” the unions said.

FAAN on Thursday issued a statement, saying that after wide consultations with stakeholders in the industry, which also involved the unions, it was agreed that the relocation of its headquarters to Lagos was in the best interest of the Authority. and the country for now.

The agency gave reasons for the relocation, which include the fact that those affected by the decision to move the headquarters to Abuja have since returned to Lagos as there is no office space for them in Abuja, noting that it was ill-advised in the first place to move the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all of them at once. 

“Having returned to Lagos, the Authority would be liable to pay them DTA (Duty Tour Allowance) because technically they are working out of station as their official posting is to Abuja. The minister has decided to stop this waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse.

“The other option open to the Authority was abandon the old FAAN building in Lagos to rot away and to use its scarce resources to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of Naira of public money when in actual fact more than 60 percent of its activities are in Lagos, given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports. The stakeholders and the Minister decided against that and to save the country this waste,” the statement said.

In a statement by the President of AYCF, Yerima Shettima, he said “this move risks undermining national unity, disrupting operations, causing economic setbacks, and perpetuating regional imbalances.”

He noted that Abuja was deliberately chosen as the nation’s capital to promote national unity and decentralise power, warning that, “Any agenda that seeks to tamper with this arrangement will be fiercely resisted by AYCF and its supporters.”

The forum expressed “disappointment with the complicit silence of the Northern elite regarding these provocations,” adding,”Northern elite must not be silent when the political and economic viability of the North is at stake”.

Shettima urged “well-meaning Nigerians to speak out against this emerging arbitrariness.”

The AYCF further urged policy makers to prioritise national unity and avoid any action that will perpetuate regional imbalances or compromise the political and economic viability of the North.

Shettima added that the AYCF remains committed to its mission of promoting unity and development in Northern Nigeria and the nation as a whole, stressing that the  group will continue to advocate for the preservation of Abuja’s status as the nation’s capital city.