By Dickson Omobola

Trustee member of the Airline Operators of Nigeria, AON, Roland Iyayi, has condemned the imposition of $300 landing fee on helicopters that provide shuttle services to oil and gas companies.

The fee is being collected by NAEBI Dynamic Concept Limited on behalf of the Federal Government in collaboration with the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, which gives start up for the take-off of aircraft across all the airports in the country.

Iyayi, who is also the President of Topbrass Aviation Limited, said before the new fee was introduced, the helicopter companies were paying all their taxes in accordance to industry regulations.

He insisted that the new tax was not thought through, noting that oil and gas companies held joint ventures with the federal government, which is represented by the NNPC.

His words: “When this matter came up during former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika’s time, we shut it down because we felt already the industry is overtaxed. Introducing something like this, we felt, was even going to be inimical to the growth of the industry.  Again, if you ask all these individuals who are justifying the collection, they always say to you that the money is going to government, but the money is leaving the aviation sector.

“In aviation, the money earned in aviation is meant to be used to develop aviation. But in Nigeria the money is used for other purposes and not ploughed back to develop the industry. With the new tax laws, the money earned will go to Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS) before it is now redistributed. Definitely things will get worse in the industry.

“What we found intriguing about the charges is that NAEBI Dynamic Concept Limited is not providing any service at all by way of infrastructure. However, they would leverage on NAMA’s infrastructure to be charging $300 per landing. Helicopter operators most of the time use platforms belonging to their clients (oil and gas companies). These are private terminals. So, how would you want a terminal operator or owner to be paying you for the use of his own facility? I don’t see how that is going to go down well with the oil and gas companies.

“So, if they go by that ultimately what it means is that government is just taxing itself. But ultimately where the downside is, is that you will now find a situation where some contracts will be cancelled, because they have a finite amount on an annual basis for their projects and they stick strictly to their budgets. If you introduce these taxes, it may result in some contracts being cancelled in order to stay within budget. So, it is the operators that will suffer it.

“I don’t think the whole thing is well thought through. However they look at it, whether the airline is paying or the oil companies are paying; ultimately, it will kill the industry. So, for me it is not something we should even consider. We should be considering reducing the current number of taxes and ensuring that the earnings are applied for the development of infrastructure commensurate to the growth of the industry.

“NAMA should do an assessment to see how that would impact on the industry before they start demanding for such payment. We condemn situations where you have all forms of charges and taxes introduced without the proper due diligence or necessary assessment to see the impact on the industry. So, there are so many things that don’t seem right.”