Louis Ibah
Minister of State for Aviation, Mr. Hadi Sirika, says the reforms initiated by the Federal government in the aviation sector in late 2015 is beginning to yield dividends for investors in the local airline industry where growth has risen by 33 per cent.
Sirika in an interview said local airline investors had leveraged on the zero import duty on imported aircraft, engines and spares as well as the abolition of VAT payments on air transportation to stabilise their operations and grow.
Sirika who gave a scorecard of the government’s performance in the last three and half years said growth in airline performance was heavily sustained by a rise in passenger traffic even as he linked the positive trend to the priority given to investments geared at ensuring safe flight operations in the country. He said the local airline industry had done better under the Buhari government than in previous administrations.
In 2018, airline operations generated over N15.3billion from Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) for government coffers as passenger traffic grew from the 9.2million figure of 2017 to 10.9million in 2018, representing 15.5per cent increase.
“One of the major achievements of this administration is the sustenance of safety, which has been phenomena; there has not been any air crash on a commercial airline taking human lives since we came on board,” Sirika said.
“Safe flight has boosted and restored passenger confidence. The sector has recorded an average growth of 33 per cent on domestic airline operations between 2017 and 2018. This is also unprecedented in this country,” Sirika added.
The Aviation Minister said the enabling environment provided for domestic airlines in the country had enabled five of the airlines to attain certification in the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA).
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“Currently five Nigerian domestic airlines have IOSA certification, and we have also designated some of them for international operations,” Sirika said.
The minister said the certifications of Kano and Port Harcourt airports to ICAO standard had reached advanced stages, pledging that, that would be achieved before the end of 2019. He said the certification of the Kano, Port Harcourt, alongside the ones already got for Lagos and Abuja airports would place Nigeria on the pivotal of aviation on the continent as no country in Africa has had more than one of its international airports certified.
Sirika said: “We streamlined various security screening points at the international airports in line with the Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business. This government also installed solar-airfield lighting at 10 airports: Akure, Port Harcourt, Sokoto, Yola, Kaduna, Minna, Enugu, Maiduguri, Jos and Ibadan. We also completed a 1,300-capacity multi-storey car park at the international terminal in Lagos through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) and the construction of Wing D Terminal at Abuja Airport.”
Sirika also lauded President Buhari for giving his nod to AMCON’s intervention in rescuing distressed Arik Air and Aero Contractors from total collapse noting that without that intervention, the two airlines would have gone bust causing huge loss of jobs for professionals in the sector. The two airlines are today still in operation, under receivership.