Stakeholders raps FG over agencies merger

From Suleiman Idris, Lagos

The Federal Government’s decision to merge three major agencies in aviation yesterday appeared to have provoke the ire of stakeholders who lampooned the action of the FG.

The government on Monday said it accepted the recommendation to scrap some agencies; it was contained in a Government White Paper by the Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.

The Steve Oransanye committee advised the government to merge the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, (NAMA), the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, (NCAA) and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NIMET) into a single regulatory body.

The new agency is being known as the Federal Civil Aviation Authority, FCAA with their respective enabling to be amended accordingly to reflect the merger.

Former Airport Commandant of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Group Captain John Ojikutu said whoever advised government to merge NAMA and NIMET with NCAA must be from another planet.

The advisers he told journalists probably forgot to include FAAN in the appropriation to further take us back to the era of self-regulatory.

“ Oransanye must have been wrongly briefed by some egg heads. How do you merge operators of the industry with the regulator? This merge completes what Oduah started – bring the industry under the jack boot of the government. Must the government drive the policy, regulate and operate the industry? We must be in a world of our own and out of the earth planet.” He queried.

Instead Ojikutu said “we should get the private operators to invest more on the industry or commercialise government operators like FAAN and NAMA as recommended in the privatisation and commercialisation Act of 2000, government instead is appropriating the industry to itself alone.”

The reason he reiterated is because government officials and political office holders cannot remove their eyes, mind and souls from the hidden or sleaze funds in these agencies.

General Secretary, Nigerian Aviation Professional Association (NAPA), Comrade Abdul Rasaq Saidu said the decision was received with shock because such step was taken in the past and it failed.

“What the government is planning to do is wrong, it will take us back to the 1995 era and whether we like it or not, I give them two years, they will return back again.”

“You don’t merge a regulatory body with a service provider, NAMA and NIMET are service providers, you cannot merge them with NCAA which is a regulatory body, this is at variance from international laws laid them by ICAO and other relevant international bodies.

Also Ekanem Ekanem, the Chairman, Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSAN), the issue is not a question of merging NCAA, it ought to have being an autonomous body since NAMA provides the equipment to make the airspace safe.