Why Aviation Industry Gaps Should Remain On Front Burner Until They Are Fixed

Air transportation, a highly regulated sector and gateway to the national economy is dynamic in nature and thrives under a conducive operating environment for all players, driven by sincerity of purpose, efficiency in systems management, alongside constant training, upgrade and modernization of infrastructure and machines, in line with technological demands of the times.

Because of this, individuals and corporate bodies who are professionals and are passionate  to see growth and development of the sector, find it difficult to remain silent when they see avoidable gaps that exist, lingering challenges that confront the sector and can possibly be fixed to actualize the industry’s full potentials.

For a country like Nigeria, the giant of Africa, the performance rating in the global aviation community usually gives concern to patriotic professionals and critics when they do the country’s capacity evaluation, which has remained in the realm of potentials for decades.

In the interest of the desired progress, it is absolutely necessary for stakeholders to continue to identify and amplify obvious solvable problems of the sector until they are fixed by appropriate authorities and players.

It is also important to note that there is a difference between amplifying existing challenges and exaggerating them or speculating about them. If analysts, observers and critics exaggerate or speculate rather than objectively amplify challenges for authorities’ attention, it defeats the essence of criticism and works against interest of the sector, thereby affecting the country’s image before the international community.

When he was appointed, there were apprehensive side comments about the ability of the Minister of Aviation & Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN) to provide the desired industry progress. The industry’s lingering challenges were highlighted and amplified. When he saw the negative pictures before him, Keyamo promised to “prove the nay-sayers wrong.”

Three years down the line, the achievements of Minister Keyamo and his team of agency heads in Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau and other agencies, can be said to have fully deflated initial pessimistic perceptions.

Some of the innumerable achievements of Minister Keyamo and his team include repositioning of Nigeria’s aviation industry for more investors’ attraction and stronger confidence, strengthening the legal framework for aircraft leasing and empowering local airlines to be able to access dry-lease aircraft so as to reduce leasing cost and improve global safety ratings, addressing the trapped funds challenge, Ministry’s support of major local MRO investments, including the Air Peace MRO facility in Lagos and the XEJET $10million MRO facility in Abuja with objective of reducing foreign maintenance dependence and creating skilled Nigerian jobs and modernization of Lagos international airport infrastructure.

Others include addition of new international routes which has reached 17 within the last five years, automation of processes at the airports and the airspace management, improvements in passenger facilitation, enhanced staff welfare, ease of process of doing business and processes of Air Operators Certificate (AOC) acquisition, successful recertification of Murtala Muhammed International Airport and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, and so on and so forth.

In one way or the other, frequent mention and amplification of the challenges of the sector served as a driving force and contributed to birthing the achievements that have been recorded. Therefore, highlighting and consistently amplifying the challenges in a system does not necessarily suggest that administrators of the system are failing to record achievements. As a matter of fact, there is no leadership of a system; no matter how brief a tenure, that has failed to record a positive achievement. However, as the saying goes, the reward for good work is more work, which criticisms (should) seek to achieve.

The essence of objectively identifying and amplifying challenges in a system is to get them addressed so the system can get better, as long as there is no bias in critical analysis that leads to analysis paralysis.

Because aviation is a peculiar sector with a lot of technicalities, residual knowledge and wealth of experience are critical assets that cannot be despised, except by an irresponsible or ignorant player in the sector. The absence of input from wealth of experience is the assurance of a bleak future for the sector. As players in the mass media and industry experts highlight gaps that should be fixed in the sector, it is advisable for those in a position to fix the identified challenges, to do so when it is brought to their attention, rather than pick on any analyst or critic, call the person unprintable names or irresponsibly launch personal attacks against the fellow.

Every right thinking patriotic and passionate stakeholder wants to see a Nigerian aviation industry that works. Collaborating with the Minister and government agencies for industry progress is necessary. Part of it is informed and constructive critique which are essential to strengthening institutions.

Safety and security for instance, are very dynamic fields in aviation. Over the past two decades, significant changes have occurred worldwide, driven by evolving threats and technological advancements. This situation draws advocacy for improvements from observing and practicing stakeholders in any country.

So, until there is apron expansion at the airports, complete sanitization of the cargo sheds at the airports, installation of airport perimetre and security fences, upgrade of airspace and air navigation equipment to globally accepted standards, training and retraining of various aviation professionals in adequate numbers, existence and patronage of local and functional aircraft MRO, and numerous other lingering issues are addressed and seen to have been fixed, industry analysts, observers, critics, professionals and other passionate stakeholders will and must continue to identify, highlight and amplify existing gaps in the system, provided it is done in the national interest. This has been the trend for decades and it should continue as long as criticisms and analysis are not speculative or exaggerating as to harm, rather than build and develop the system. AM