Rot in Aviation sector requires concerted effort —Tukur

By AKOMA CHINWEOKE

Alhaji,Mohammed Tukur, former coordinator of Chachangi Airline, is a member of a committee set up by Federal government to look into aviation matters after operators complained about the poor state of affairs at the nation’s airport. He is also  assistant secretary general, Airline Operators of Nigeria. In this interview, he says that until the rot in the system is addressed holistically, the country cannot achieve any significant improvement in the sector Excerpts

MANY operators have criticised  government policies particularly the     grounding of indebted airlines as  unhealthy for the growth of the sector. What is your view on this?

I don’t believe in that. The government has to ground an airline when it is owing. You owe people and government organisations and we are complaining about poor infra structure, then you accumulate debt and could not pay. So, any chief executive who is complaining about government policies and is not willing to pay up his dept, I do not think such a person is very fair to government. The truth of the matter is that they mismanage their funds. All my life I have never seen an operator who went and bought an aircraft on D-cheque.

What do you mean by D- cheque?

You see, when you want to buy an aircraft, it is either you go for a new one or you buy the one which is already flying but when someone buys an aircraft that he cannot fly, then to make it fly you have to replace every part with new  ones to put that aircraft  in order. If it is C-cheque, it’s a different issue but that one was D.

How has the shake-up in the banking sector affected airline operations in the country?

Airlines are finding it very difficult to remain in business. Some have to shut their operations completely in order to reorganise. So, even the banks are no more willing to give out loans to operators as some who have benefitted in the past have not been able to payback. If any bank gives you money to do your business and at the end they are unable to retrieve that money, what do you think would happen? Definitely, the airline would collapse and when that happens, if  the banker decides to take the debtor to court, the man would go to jail and come out and you would lose your money.

Mohammed Tukur

So, my advice to banks is to look at all these debts, finance airlines so that they can bring back their money. If they do not trust the leadership of any airline, then they should do what they did to the banking sector.  Take over the airline, bring in staff , put  e-ticketing and  so on. They can monitor it from your office using your technology. So, let the banks collect the money directly and whatever any executive needs should be written as cheque after which the bank would release it . The banks also can open a separate operational account dedicated to all their transactions. If it is fuel, you do not need to allow them to handle it, the marketers should provide the invoice, let the airline verify it, then they should forward it to the bank who would draw the cheaque and pay. So, with such arrangements, no body is going  to cry but if banks leave airlines to keep collecting  money and taking what they want to take into their account, definitely the debt will still remain . So, as far as banks are trusted with public funds they need to monitor  how these funds are spent.

What about the government?  Has it done enough to address infrastructural problems in the sector?

The government also has its own faults. The airline operators have suffered  a lot in terms of burning aviation fuel due to lack of facilities. So,  many local airline operators have lost a lot of engines worth billions and millions of naira because the government has refused  to render the service they are supposed to render.  So the various government agencies at the airport should take their duties more seriously because they can not run away from their responsibilities. The head of these agencies must be accountable officers who know what they are doing.  So you can be an accountable officer or head of a parastatal  and when there is trouble you will say it is not your fault.
There are so many things that have gone wrong I will give you an example.  A contract was awarded for the rehabilitation of the Muritala Mohammed International airport, when they finished they said they forgot the landing light, so the government had to award another contract for the landing light.

I do not know which engineer designed that proposal and when they finished the run way and it was not opened until the current aviation minister assumed office that it was opened . Yet ,there was no landing light and they have promised that they will get landing light. So how can an aircraft land at night, when there is no landing light. Can you imagine the number of aircraft coming into this country and after 6 PM a local airline can not fly to a local airport and land safely. All aircraft would head to the international airport. So, it means it will take more than 45 minutes for you to take off, because they would have to give the one coming in priority. When you leave Abuja 6 o’clock or 6:30 to come to Lagos, you are going to have more than 20 aircraft. You cannot understand the kind of trauma those workers are going through.

The only thing we are going to do is to plead with the Federal government  to hold on to all debt while arrangement for their payment would be worked out. The debtors can say in ten years time we would clear it up but the FG can pick a date and say from today, every new debt you accumulate you must pay. For instance, if you had landed in Abuja,  FAAN would  invoice you for that landing. If you make a parking after a certain grace period you would be given a bill which you must make payment for as far as that aircraft is serviceable.  So, if you want to park your aircraft for four hours, it is up to you. So, we can start with that.
That’s pay as you go because if you fly now to Ghana, you cannot leave there without paying. Immediately you land, they would give you your bill to pay. We are not owing Ghana and back home we cannot settle our bills.
What about  our charges back home, can they be compared to what is obtains elsewhere?

We know that our charges are very high and not in tandem with what is obtainable anywhere else in the world and we have noted that in our committee.  So, we believe government would look into that. So, if after the committee submitted its report and the government would make some changes, as the NCAA is already working with some sister companies to come up with some new charges. For instance, at FAAN, one square meter of your office is 30,000. It has never been done anywhere. So, if they look at the charges and reduced it to a certain level, then people should start paying but it has be  in uniform because the operation of airline anywhere in the world is the same. Whether night landing, morning landing or day landing, the charges should be the same.

Many have alleged foul play in the airport concessioning exercise, in your view has the process been fair to all?
The government has no money to build or renovate airports.  If you go to Dubai or anywhere in the world you can not compare the modern state of those airports with ours .You see changes occurring in those airports every now and then but here in Muritala Mohammed airport, for example due to it’s poor state, passengers are very scared of using the lift.