I don’t know if these statistics would interest you: the aviation
industry alone directly contributes $664.4 billion to global GDP yearly — and
that is far more than Nigeria’s entire gross domestic product. Every year, over
three billion passengers fly the world’s airlines. Over 50 million tonnes of
freight are airlifted across the world. The direct jobs from these are close to
10 million. In the larger picture, the air passenger business supports 63
million jobs globally and triggers $2.7 trillion worth of value in the world’s
GDP. It is said that if aviation were a country, it would be the 21st biggest
economy in the world, just marginally out of the G20.
These statistics
are probably outdated — I mined them from a 2016 report commissioned by the
Geneva-based Air Transport Action Group (ATAG), a coalition of aviation
industry experts. Most of the statistics were from 2014, meaning things have
certainly changed in the last three years, and only for the better. Aviation
industry keeps growing in spite of all the challenges. It is an industry that
has an impressive fleet of activities generating jobs and businesses directly
and indirectly: construction, supplies, aircraft manufacturing, information
technology, consumer goods, banking, hospitality and so on. Aviation is, of
course, a major artery for tourism, as we all know.
As we continue to
discuss how to move away from our “petrocentric” economy — by which I
mean an economy that relies mainly on the oxygen of petroleum resources to
breathe — one sector that must begin to take its place of pride is aviation.
The case for agriculture and industry has been well made by all and sundry.
But, as things are turning out, Nigeria, with a population closing in on 200
million by 2020, needs to fully develop as many sectors of the economy as
possible. There are millions of jobs and value-added outputs that are begging
to be unleashed. The good news is that some sectors can fund themselves — all
we need are good policies to open them up.
Aviation is one
of such. Senator Hadi Sirika, the minister of state for aviation, has
articulated a roadmap for the sector which, in my opinion, needs all the
interrogation and fine-tuning it can use in the overall interest of national
development. Sirika comes across as a man of conviction and determination — and
I must confess I did not become his fan until after the successful
rehabilitation of the runway of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport,
Abuja, early this year. I was one of those who thought that even though
rehabilitating the runway was of utmost importance, shutting down the airport
for six weeks was unthinkable. But here we are.
Turning Nigeria’s
aviation to one of the most buoyant and active in Africa is not going to be a
tea party. Countries such as Ethiopia, Morocco, UAE and Qatar have demonstrated
that aviation can be a key driver of economic growth, but Rome was not built
just like that. We talk about the successes of Ethiopian Airlines, Emirates and
Qatar Airways all the time — and these are businesses that turn over billions
of dollars yearly — yet we are unable to create our own success stories beyond
saying that Lagos is one of the busiest airports in Africa and that Nigeria has
a population of 185 million and all that. We are playing with the chickens when
we should be soaring with the eagles.
According to
Sirika, his vision is to build an aerospace and aeronautic university in
partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the
specialised UN agency that regulates global aviation. We need high-level
manpower, no doubt about that, and we must be able to produce that at home.
Quite importantly, we also need to go into research and development. It is
interesting that a country like Brazil, which entered into aviation industry
about the same time with Nigeria, is now producing aircraft. It is a Nigerian
thing, right? NNPC started out around the same time with Statoil of Norway and
ENI of Italy — and that is where the comparison ends.
Sirika has also
been very passionate about concessioning the airports. This has a lot of
political implications — the unions are eternally opposed to private management
of public assets, no matter the evidence that it is a better option for a
country with weak public management capacity like Nigeria. The attraction, for
me, is that the federal government will no longer be allocating funds to these
airports. Most of them are commercially viable and should sustain themselves.
But it pays some fat cats for budgetary allocations to keep pouring in every
year. The Chinese, Singaporeans, Qataris and Saudis have chosen the
concessioning route. We need to give it a chance too.
A more
contentious issue is Sirika’s proposal for a national carrier. I have opposed
this idea from day one. My argument has been that any business managed by
government in Nigeria will not run well. I can give a million examples. We all
know how Nigeria Airways nosedived into the abyss. Government officials were
distributing free tickets to their girlfriends and relatives. It was anything
goes. Virgin Nigeria, partly owned by Nigerian institutional investors and
Virgin Atlantic, took off on a promising note but soon flew into turbulence and
ended in oblivion. It has been one sad story after the other. Thank God Sirika
says the proposed national carrier has a different business model.
Other aspects of
the roadmap which I find noteworthy are the establishment of maintenance,
overhaul and repair (MRO) services to cater for airlines in Nigeria (Morocco,
Ethiopia and South Africa are excelling in this); setting up of a leasing
company to provide affordable finance to aviation entrepreneurs; creation of
world-class search and rescue operations to support eventualities in the sector;
and the creation of agro-allied airports — a very big deal, in my
opinion, if we are to succeed with export-oriented agric business. Jos airport
once served as a centre for flower export while the Yola airport was used for
mangoes and such like. That is history now. What a pity.
In a way, all
these things are linked: training, research and development, concessioning of
airports, MRO services to support the national carrier and other international
airlines operating in Nigeria, provision of finance for aviation entrepreneurs,
creating world-class search and rescue infrastructure, and designating airports
for agric business. But the devil is always lurking at the corner. In this
case, I am thinking of the bureaucracy. Virtually of all Sirika’s initiatives
are going to be powered by the private sector, meaning there is less of
government hands and finance involved. They sound good, but what about the
agencies to implement and manage the process?
Again, that means
restructuring and strengthening them. An agency like the Federal Airports
Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), which has 45 GMs, cannot continue to operate the
way it is. Every GM is on Level 17, with all the benefits and perks of office.
This is incredible. That is how wasteful the Nigerian bureaucracy is and any
attempt to reform it will always face resistance. Sirika’s roadmap talks about
reviewing the laws setting up these agencies in order to make them more
efficient. He also says the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) will
become fully autonomous in order to exercise its regulatory oversight
unencumbered. That is non-negotiable.
In a way, things
have been looking up for the Nigerian aviation industry. ICAO has just held its
World Aviation Forum in Abuja — the first outside its headquarters in Montreal,
Canada. That was a huge honour to the country and an apparent recognition of
our potential and positive strides. Indeed, ICAO just issued a certificate to
designate the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, as a Centre of
Excellence for the West and Central Africa region — and that takes NCAT to the
top 20 of the best training schools in the world. The Nigerian Meteorological
Agency only recently got ISO 9001:2015 certification — the only African
meteorological agency with that badge.
I travel fairly
often and I am saddened whenever I see the state of our airports, but I am much
more demoralised when I see what Emirates and Qatar Airways are doing. We are
far behind them. However, we need not beat ourselves too much: we are well
positioned to write our own story with our own hands. If Sirika can implement
the aviation roadmap with the same grit and guts that he displayed in closing
down Abuja airport to rebuild the runway, then there will be much more to
celebrate under his watch. I’m happy he engaged extensively with the
stakeholders over the roadmap. They can do and undo. All going well, we can hit
another oil — this time in the skies.
Source: The Cable
