Nigeria Content Online

The power outage
that paralysed operations at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport
in May this year was caused by the poor management of the airport, the
Senate has said.

The report of the
Senate Committee on Aviation, led by Ayim Ude (PDP Ebonyi state),
reveals that the power outage at the airport and other infrastructural
decay at the airport were primarily technical failures caused by lack
of funds.

The report says
the poor funding was as a result of a N17 billion debt owed Federal
Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) which the management of FAAN has
been unable to collect due to “flagrant disregard for all known
business decorum, rules, regulations and best practices.” Following the
report, the Senate on Wednesday asked the federal government to “carry
out a total overhaul of the management of FAAN in order to deal with
the corruption and incompetence in the operational system of the
organization.” The report, which was adopted by the Senate on
Wednesday, detailed how the alleged managerial failure at the aviation
authority led to a series of facility decay at the airport, resulting
in intermittent “embarrassing” breakdown of facilities at the airport.

“There is no gain
saying that our airports are embarrassments to Nigeria,” the Senate
President, David Mark, said, “Apart from the building being an
embarrassment, there are too many things that go wrong with our
airports.” According to the report, the aviation authority has seven
categories of clients including the government, handling companies,
active airlines, dormant airlines, oil companies, and concessionaires
(general and management). It says these clients collectively owe the
agency N16.777 billion.

While the
government is owing FAAN N1.405 billion, active airlines and dormant
airlines owe N3.02 billion and N2.794 billion respectively. Handling
companies owe N1.136 billion and oil companies owe the least N415.787
million.

Ghost companies

The report also
published a list of 26 companies that are management concessionaires
handling internally generated revenue collection for FAAN. These class
of companies owe FAAN the highest amount, of N5.534 billion.

“None of these
management concessionaires had bank guarantees while most of them
neither have Memorandum of Incorporation nor detailed contractual
agreement with FAAN,” Mr. Ude said. “Of all the concessionaires that
did business with FAAN, only 35% of them were properly documented.”
Meavis Nigeria Ltd and Bi-Courtney Ltd are among the 26 management
concessionaires of FAAN, but they claimed that FAAN’s allegations that
they owe N1.3 billion and N856.98 million respectively as outstanding
revenue collected and not yet remitted to FAAN are untrue.

However, the
Senate recommended that the federal government should direct FAAN to
“dispense with the services of Meavis ltd since it was unable to add
value to FAAN’s revenue profile… in the interest of airport
development and administration in the country.” The Senate also urged
the aviation minister to present the seven-year old dispute between
FAAN and Bi-Courtney on the concession agreement to the Federal
Executive Council.