In this interview with IME AKPAN, the managing director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Ibrahim Abdulsalam, explains steps taken to recover the huge debts domestic airlines owe to the agency, why NAMA is hard put to deny the indebted airlines its services, the agency’s challenges occasioned by shortage of staff, limited funds agitation by unions for enhanced welfare as well as the agency’s resolve to think outside the box by acquiring its own calibration equipment with which it could use to generate revenue internally to sustain itself.
Reconciling airlines’ debts and steps taken to recover them
One of the things done by the former minister (of aviation) was to get a third party to reconcile the debts to everybody’s satisfaction and work out the modalities for payment. That is the reason I have not given out the actual debt figures. These airlines are Nigerian carriers and they are a part of the system. So, the people really affected are not the ones that have a problem; nobody goes to fly on credit, you have to pay for the ticket. If we ground the airlines, people will be affected. So at the end of the day those that will have the problem are the major users of airlines’ services. They are the people that are badly affected because some people might have planned their trip for the next one month and then you hold them back because the airline is not flying. This will affect business in the country. If we could work things out amicably, it would go a long way to solve the problem.
After that problem of accumulated debts, we now use the pay-as-you-go method. Even at that some of them are still having issues, but we have to try and manage the situation not for their sake but for the larger interest of the country. So we really have to look at that for a lot of problems are not solved by confrontation and threat. We should be able to look at each other’s interest and find a way to mend fences.
On Arik Air’s debt, we tried to resolve it by using a consultant. The consultant was arranged by the federal government. But somewhere along the line, the consulting firm disclosed that it had been working for Arik prior to the time. So that is what has slowed down the process. If the consultant had no ties with Arik, the process (of reconciling the debts) would have been on.
Cost of calibration by ASECNA
The exact figure will be made available as soon as possible. The Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar’s (ASECNA) people charges per each flying hour. But usually, at the end of the day they will go back to their country and collate all the hours and send the bill to us. When they are here, we pay for the fuel, their hotel accommodation and some other logistics.
Now, when they go back, they look at the whole hours they flew, collate take cost of fuel and hotel. So whatever is left after all the deductions is what we are going to pay to them. These are not hidden costs; you can access what different parts of the world charge to do calibration. Meanwhile, we are looking forward to how we can acquire the calibration capability because it is something we need to do for ourselves.
We are working on it and we believe very soon we will get to that point where we will be doing it by ourselves and possibly do business with it also. It takes ASECNA such a long time to come here because there are so many people lining up for them, besides the security challenge in Nigeria. Some of them believe that the whole of the country is engulfed by the Boko Haram crisis. So for them to move around, like this trip to Nigeria they didn’t go to the northern part of the country because they said their insurance would not cover that area.
Debts to Messrs Thales SA of France for the maintenance of TRACOM
After the completion of the total radar coverage of Nigeria, TRACON project, Thales had to provide maintenance and spare parts needed so that any point, TRACON will run continuously.
There are some things that are proprietary to them. It’s only when we have this maintenance agreement with them that we can ensure that the TRACON will work. So that is how that money came about.
For about three or four years, they were not paid and at the expiration of the contract last year they decided that they were not going to continue because they were being owed. Even though we make effort to make them understand that government was making arrangement to pay they insisted that if they did not get their money they would withdraw their service which they did. However, government had made the money available and they have been taken care of.
Self-sustainability of NAMA
We pay our salaries. Yes, there are some projects that have been given out by the federal government which we are trying to see how we can complete them. But the difference between us and the government is that the government has a pool where it can take some money. If the government goes and takes N6 billion to buy something it doesn’t really feel it but NAMA cannot take N6 billion.
We can take charge of our resources, activities and continue to run our operations but what we need to do is to be able to plan and prioritise. And even for us we know we are getting to that point.
Before the price of (crude) oil even dropped we were already looking ahead to when the government would say “go and be on your own.” To be honest, most of these projects we are getting money from government are projects awarded in 2005, 2009, and 2010. These are the ones we are looking for how to close. We don’t have any new projects coming from the government now. The Controller–pilot data link communications, CPDLC, we are talking about is being done by NAMA.
Over-staffing and ATCs’ agitation
We are a little above 2, 000 personnel; it’s nowhere near 4, 000. We are trying as much as possible to make the best of our staff strength. One of ATCs’ complaints is that they don’t have enough staff.
The engineers too have the same complaint. Now, if we are at that level and somebody is telling us that we have up to 4, 000 staff don’t you think that we have a problem? Apart from that, we have new airports springing up. They are not going to man themselves; we have to send people to man those places. So, to be honest, if we had 4, 000 staff they will go round and will be able to provide all the services where we need them. We cannot manage a staff strength of 4, 000 with what we generate at the moment.
We have a moderate workforce. When we look at our workforce for instance the issue of ATC, we have people internally who have qualifications to work as ATCs. Instead of bringing in new people, we will do internal advertisement. So they come in; some of them are there now, almost 40 of them are being looked at. Then they will go through a screening process; they will be sent to Zaria and they will become ATCs. The engineers don’t have that luxury because we don’t have people that are engineers that are employed in other places.
Challenges
There are several challenges and one of the major ones is finance. But whatever happens, we have to make do with what we have. We look at what we have and make the best of it, try to prioritise. We put very essential things in the front burner and go ahead. We don’t want to look at them as problems; we see them as things we need to do to get to the next level. It’s not as if we don’t have issues; we are taking care of those issues. Some of these have to do with labour which was in the news. It’s not as if we didn’t want to respond to the air traffic controllers (ATCs). That was not the case.
If the ATCs say ‘A’ today and NAMA says ‘B’, we would just be there trading words. But if we sit down and try to resolve issues even if they keep screaming and we sit with them trying to find a way to resolve the issue, it does enough for us, the flying public and the country. And that is the approach we have taken. So, we have issues and by the grace of God we are moving ahead and addressing them.
