By Louis Ibah.
Anxiety reigned amongst staff of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) yesterday as there was a major redeployment, demotion and sack of some top management staff of the airport management firm.
Those mostly affected were among the ranks of Directors, General Managers and Deputy General Managers. Daily Sun learnt that about 22 staff were affected and that the Federal Government had approved of the exercise following a “FAAN restructuring report” submitted by a panel’s headed by the Head of Service, Mrs Winifred Oyo – Ita.
The affected officers were demoted from Grade Levels 17 and 16 to levels 10, 12 and 14. In the last four years, many stakeholders especially labour unions in the aviation sector have faulted the processes which led to the employment and promotion of some of the affected directors in FAAN as not following due process and not reflecting the competence levels of the officials.
“Some of the top officials in FAAN, were just brought in and dumped on the agency by previous ministers irrespective of their years of experience, competence on the job and even academic qualifications.
It was a reign of impunity and today many general managers that were not properly placed have been demoted and some redeployed and some staff even asked to go home,” a source at FAAN told Daily Sun.
“This sack, demotion and redeployment is just the beginning of a long exercise which will see the government repositioning the agency and ridding it of some of the incompetent and fraudulent officials and also ensuring that it is only the right quality and number of staff required by FAAN remains,” the source said. One of those said to be affected was an Acting Director of Finance was demoted to Grade Level 10 and was subsequently redeployed to the Department of Information Communication and Technology (ICT). All the Spokespersons for the agency had refused to comment on the subject when contacted .