By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief & Ezra Ukanwa

The establishment of African Aviation and Aerospace University, Abuja was captured in the nation’s Aviation Roadmap with a view to re-setting the narrative in the sector in Nigeria. In this interview, pioneer Registrar of the university, Mustapha Sheikh Abdullahi, provides an insight into idea behind the institution which he says is a game-changer in the aviation industry, having been equipped to curb capital associated with foreign training of aviation personnel, as well as repair and maintenance of planes. The Registrar also reveals that the university has entered into partnership with aviation industry players from across the world to assemble planes in the country. Excerpts:

What is the idea behind AAAU?

The idea behind establishing a University of Aviation is to primarily focus on the managerial aspect of the industry. It has been in the pipeline as far back as 2016 when the immediate past administration thought about setting out an Aviation Roadmap. Recall the popular Hadi Sirika Aviation Roadmap? It included the celebrated Nigeria Air. If you look at the entire six items on the roadmap, establishing an Aviation University was part of it. So, it has been in the pipeline since 2016 but it was kept under the table since 2022 when more need for it arose. In their wisdom, the crafters of this university realized that there is a gap in the managerial knowledge of aviation as a business. This university was not primarily set up to teach people how to take off or land or how to fix airplanes. Even though in the future, we are planning on how to go about it, the primary aim is not to learn how to take off and landing—the technical aspects of aviation. If you take yourself back to as recent as 1999 to 2023 or 2024 even, because some airlines also went down in 2023 to 2024, between 1999 and 2024, that is 23 years. You can ask yourself, how many airlines have we had in Nigeria? Take your mind back to Concord, Okada, Harka, IRS and the rest. What happened to them? It wasn’t basically about the lack of funds. It wasn’t basically about the lack of pilots, lack of engineers. They all collapsed due to managerial skills. They lacked managerial knowledge of how to run aviation as a business. One multi-billionaire might think he has some billions to invest, he will just go and buy airplanes and give pilots to fly. That is not all it takes. Look at most of the established airlines, take yourself to Emirates, they have a university itself that does research and development for business models. So, the Nigerian government felt the need to lead in Africa. There’s none of its kind in Africa. This is the first of its kind in Africa. Even though in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Airlines has something like this but AAAU came before Ethiopia even though they started before, it is not as conventional as the one we have here, so Ethiopia is largely for their airlines. But, this is coming up from fresh ground to broaden the knowledge of Africa, not only Nigeria —it is a Pan African University to broaden the knowledge from the Bachelor level and also offer professional programs.

What are the professional programmes?

We’ve commenced with B. Sc Aviation Business and B. Sc Meteorology. Why did we choose these two programs? B. Sc Aviation, Business and Meteorology, is to create a breeding ground for meteorologists for NiMET and other meteorologists around the world, especially as it is a core requirement, very encouraged requirement for the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) to have people trained from B. Sc level, not having geographers converted to  meteorologists. We have some universities in Nigeria that have been doing that and we are not pioneering the study of meteorology. Federal University of Minna runs B. Sc up to Ph.D level in meteorology, FUT Akure is also doing that, so we can also join the queue to be able to give resources to the entire aviation sector. At the M. Sc level, we have M. Sc Air Transport Management, M. Sc Air Safety Management, M. Sc Meteorology with four specializations in Agro Meteorology, Hydro Meteorology, Synoptic Meteorology and Climate Change Science.

Those courses are for M. Sc level. Why did you choose to start at M. Sc and not from the first degree level?

Yes, that’s because for first degree, B.  Sc Aviation Business can take care of these. But in M. Sc you have to master it and it’s narrowed down to a particular field. Why we are starting with that and also part of our success stories, there is no university that I know in Nigeria that has commenced from inception with postgraduate, usually it takes time, five years, six years while some 10-15 years before they commence postgraduate studies. We got the same license the same time we were starting B. Sc and also starting M. Sc; so it is a success story for us. We had to do a lot to convince the NUC (National Universities Commission) to be able to say “yes, we can do it” and the industry needs this because the aviation industry is not regulated by degrees and is not covered by degrees, its licenses and certifications. So, you have people at the managerial level but they don’t have the academic backing because the entire academic aspect of aviation is not so old, it is one of the newest academic study areas. From research, we understood that aviation, as an academic field of study, is not up to 70 years like you have physics and chemistry that are thousands of years. That is why we are not taking those courses for M. Sc. We’re not only going to end it there, we are expanding. Last year, we started two B. Sc (programmes) and this year we are adding two more B. Sc (programmes) especially in climate change sciences. This was necessitated from our discussion at COP 28 in Dubai, where the university was encouraged to immediately commence an undergraduate program in climate change sciences. 

Given that these courses are new to our environment, how do you source your lecturers? Let’s talk about Aviation Business at the undergraduate level. What are the courses?

You will do accounting, business administration, you do GNS courses; so it is just like two or three courses that are core in aviation and, luckily in Nigeria, we have quite a number of people that have gone abroad to obtain postgraduate degrees in these fields. For example, one of our HODs has a Masters in Aviation Management. So, we have resource persons from the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology, NITT, from some of the universities around; some are from the industry but they have the requirements to be in class; so, for now, these are the people we are using. And, most interestingly, the university was set up to be a hybrid university. Some of our lecturers are not based in Nigeria. If you can take a tour of our classrooms, we have big screens to enable lecturers teach digitally. This is 2024 and COVID has taught us a lot and so most of our lectures happen online. We are partnering about seven universities abroad. Yes, a team just came back from a European tour. We were in Budapest, we were in Toulouse, France, we just came back and we signed MoU with Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile, ENAC. We are also about to sign MoU with industry players; in fact with three industry players in Hungary one of which is the Magnus Aircraft Manufacturing Company. They are coming to AAAU to set up an aircraft assembly plant, we are perfecting it already. That will be part of our faculty of Aeronautical Engineering. So, it is like a double-edged sword while they are doing their assembling, and selling their aircraft, our students will be learning. IRIS that specialises in developing drones is also coming to Nigeria to establish an assembly plant. What do they get? We as a university will do all the groundwork. The corporate standards of Nigeria and every other approval, we will secure it on their behalf, we will pay for approvals; we will build the warehouses. In fact, we have sent our technical team to go back to see their plant so we can have a replica of it. Tetfund has already secured some funds for us to build such things, we are building it. They are going to bring in their facilities and instruments to come and be assembling. They will be selling their aircraft because the Nigerian Air Force is looking closely into that aircraft. That aircraft is so light and easy to fly. The technology is so superb and it is something you can park at the front of your house, and it can happen in Nigeria and the Nigeria Air Force has already bought about five of the aircraft.

What are the opportunities for job creation in this institution? 

When we talk about job creation, of course, every government establishment looks at how it can absorb people from the labor market. But, I think the crafters of this university were very careful not to make it the primary objective of the institution. Of course, as I’m talking to you now, there are over 70 people that work directly or indirectly under the university. In fact, we have quite a number of over a 100 people working here in this small place that we have and imagine if we moved to our permanent site. Of course, the primary aim is to look for productivity. Of course, this place should engage at least not less than 250 productive Nigerians in the next five years. You see, from the students that we are going to graduate in the next three years, I’m sure the industry will be rushing to employ them because they are going to be crafters of knowledge; because they certainly must have gone through a very rigorous training here to make them independent. For example, the Head of Safety in an airline in Nigeria often doesn’t know anything about safety. It is when the companies employ him that he will be taught, mostly learning on the job. And, mostly, you don’t have mentorship, when he goes, he goes with the knowledge because there is no avenue to impact that knowledge but we have people that are going to come out with that knowledge that is going to be like a reservoir of knowledge. And, just in the industry, we have many other businesses under aviation. Do you know that even ticketing itself, if you understand the gimmicks, it is not a small deal? Students are taught that also. Even the graphical representation of the industry itself, we need to know. An aviation expert should be able to tell you why Air Peace ticket costs N110, 000 for instance, while others cost N150, 000 just by simple analysis. And for every aircraft that takes off at least 50 people were indirectly or directly employed.

 In broad terms, how will AAAU impact the Nigerian economy?

 It will curb the huge capital flight associated with the aviation industry. To start with, it will drastically reduce the cost of training aviation personnel. It can take as much as $30, 000 to train personnel abroad. But here, our students pay only about N1. 6million. This is far less than the cost of training abroad and because government is funding the university with a view to achieving the objectives of the Aviation Roadmap. Besides reducing the cost of training, when fully developed and the partners with whom we have signed agreements establish assembly plants here, they will also ensure the maintenance of aircraft here in Nigeria. That will go a long way in conserving foreign exchange as well as ensure prompt maintenance and overhaul of aircraft operated by Nigerian airlines.  As things stand right now, planes are flown abroad for MRO (Maintenance, Repairs and Overhaul) and some could queue for several months. MRO is carried out every two years. Can you imagine how expensive it is for airlines operators? But once we can carry out MRO in this university, in collaboration with partners, you will see how easier it will be for operators to keep their planes in good shape and at much lower costs.