AM EDITORIAL: Respect For Institutional Processes, Standards In Nigeria’s Aviation Industry
The progress and development of societies lean on compliance with established institutional standards and processes. Despising such established norms produces implications that disrupt progress and possibly retard it.
Since the inception of air transportation, improvements have been built based on standards in diverse areas such as human resource management, infrastructure deployment, customer services, operational conduct and so on.
A pilot for instance, is not expected to hop into a plane and conduct a commercial jet flight, carrying 100 passengers onboard without crew briefing and weather report. Every operation is carried out in line with set rules and standards for the safety of flights. Failure to comply with processes or do the right things comes with implications.
The Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) is the institution mandated by law to provide weather information to airlines including Query Nautical Height (QNH), which refers to current air pressure at sea level. The Current Nowcast of Hazardous (CNH) Weather Reports, are critical for safe landings, especially during heavy rainfall and thunderstorms. Without pilot weather information, flight safety cannot be guaranteed, even though certain modern equipment enable what some professionals in the industry have described as risk.
Provision of weather information to airlines is to enable safe operations. On Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025, staff unions of NiMET embarked on a strike action over a number of unresolved grievances relating to poor working conditions, including salary relativity with other aviation agencies, non-implementation of the 2019 consequential adjustment to the national minimum wage (affecting at least 30 omitted staff), demands for a 25/35% salary increase, 40% hardship/peculiar allowances, annual staff trainings, among others.
Because of this strike action by NiMET personnel, one of Nigeria’s major airlines announced suspension of all flights pending the resumption of full service by the NiMET personnel. This is the responsible thing to do in the interest of safety of equipment and air passengers. Many other airlines defied institutional process and safety standards by continuing operations without weather information from NIMET.
The situation lingered until the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN) intervened by promising to do what ought to have been done years ago.
Failure to comply with institutional rules and processes comes with implications. If for instance, the aged salary relativity issue and the 2019 consequential adjustment to the national minimum wage (affecting at least 30 omitted staff) had been implemented by 2020, the recent expensive flight disruptions from NiMET unions’ strike action might not have occurred.
Even as at the time of writing this editorial, stakeholders are not sure that there would not be a repeat of such operational disruption soon, since the unions SUSPENDED the strike until May 13, 2025, “pending the outcome of the Minister’s intervention on the issues raised.”
The current Minister of Aviation & Aerospace Development deserves commendation for intervening in the crisis. However, we are wondering why in this clime, authorities fail or deliberately refuse to do the right things at the right times to avert avoidable systems problems.
Aviation is a safety sensitive industry and is different from every other sector of Nigeria’s economy as the gateway to the economy.
We therefore urge the federal government to ensure that all outstanding staff welfare issues involving personnel of NiMET, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) and Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria are resolved as soon as possible to avoid periodic embarrassing strike actions that do not only disrupt safety of flight operations but do also deny the country revenues and portray Nigeria as an unserious country in the global aviation business market. AM
