Aviation stakeholders in the Nigerian aviation industry say Nigeria is not ready for the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO’s) audit.
Director-general of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Capt Musa Nuhu had said that the nation is prepared for ICAO’s universal safety oversight audit programme continuous monitoring approach slated for the first quarter of 2022.
But managing-director, Aglow Aviation Support Services, Tayo Ojuri, said even though the NCAA DG, has said the nation is prepared for ICAO’s audit, there are still some challenges that needed to be addressed in the aviation sector for Nigeria not to fail.
Ojuri said challenges such as passenger facilitation, security, seamless facilitation of passengers are still sources of nightmare in the nation’s aviation sector.
As a solution, Ojuri opined that NCAA needs to look the challenges, including the ambience within the airports, and set up processes to ensure it adhereS to best international practices but, in all, we need to seek for improvement in the system.
“We should create awareness. What we have done in Nigeria is that we get ready for the audit and after the audit we go back to our failures but, we must ensure that all the things are put in place to standard and ensure awareness among all stakeholders,” he stated
He said the audit should also involve all the stakeholders including the airlines, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) among others.
Abioye said the aviation security being provided by FAAN is inadequate and incompetent, adding that is has questionable characters recruited into the system.
“There are issues Nigeria promised to resolve before they come back but the government particularly the NCAA knows what we are lacking. Firstly, we have said it repeatedly though, it’s not that we aren’t trying in terms of aviation security and safety but, we need to do more, we need to up our game and I am aware that Nigeria Aviation Security being provided by FAAN is inadequate, they required competent hands to beef up what they have presently.
“We have had budgets running into billions approved for snipper dogs, how do we spend billions procuring snipper dogs when the human element that are there are being neglected, how many of our AVSEC are taken outside Nigeria for international training?”
“On facilitation, I cannot imagine passengers landing and they will wait two hours and more before they can pick their luggages this shouldn’t happen because in a saner environment and system, under 15 to 20mins passengers should be out of the airports but reverse is the case here you can as well take an inspection of what is happening without system in any of the airports, you will be amazed, from screening machines where you have three only one will be operational and they will put on light as of it is normal but, it’s not but deceiving people.” By and large, I know we can fix these things and get our pass mark as usual,” he stated.
Source: leadership
