By Ochereome Nnanna, Chairman, Editorial Board
Captain Rabiu Hamisu Yadudu, the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) had a roundtable with a group of editors and addressed a number of topical issues about developments in our airports today.
HOW do you assess the state of our airports today?
I was the Director of Airport Operations for more than two years before I was appointed MD. So, most of the issues that are on ground are familiar to me. I have a lot of prior experience in different areas of aviation. I am an aircraft engineer, electrical and electronics, I still have the certification. I have been a chief pilot and a captain for over 20 years and I have operated Boeing 747 aircraft. I also have a lot of experience in airport management and development.
Having become the MD of FAAN, I have no reason not perform to expectations. I am working very hard to see that we succeed. Aviation is for everyone, and we are collaborating with our stakeholders to gauge what we are doing, which we use as our feedback to fine-tune our operations. We have started bi-monthly meetings with Aircraft Owners Association of Nigeria. We meet in our boardroom here and in Abuja. They drew up about 21 items for us to work on to improve the industry. When they submitted this list to me, I added seven more items, all to help us to keep improving.
The second issue concerns our internal operations. I made it clear to our staff that they can send direct messages to the MD through Whatsapp and dedicated numbers to enable me have valuable information about things happening in the system and how to fix them. Thirdly, we do know we have a lot of infrastructure and equipment all around Nigeria. It is clear to us that a lot of our equipment and infrastructure are dilapidated, and we have been working to resolve all issues, from the smallest to the biggest. An Example is Enugu Airport.
It had been bad for about six years. We decided to do the right thing. So we said, in the interest of our security, safety and our reputation as a nation we have to close it, fix it and put it back into operation. So we have closed it. We have started work to fix it. I am assuring everyone that when we reopen the Enugu International Airport, it will look like a new one. We are fixing the runway, drainage system, medical facility, security, even the staff quarters. We are hoping that when we resume operations, there it will become a 24-hour airport. Currently, it is from sunrise to sunset.
From that, we are coming down to the basic issues of maintenance of our system and equipment. The most important people in this area is the personnel, our staff. These are the people that bring about achievement. No equipment or infrastructure can perform on its own. It is the personnel that will have to deliver, and so we are working in that area to make sure that our staff is fully and competently trained, with instructors from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and some from within. We are getting a lot of support from the National Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to train our people and also get some of our best materials to develop them to become our instructors, which is like an advanced kind of capacity building. This will ensure that whatever we do with our facilities and equipment will be in good hands who have been properly trained.
Aviation is a heavily-regulated industry and so whatever we are doing we ensure we are not merely fully in in compliance but also above performance thresholds. Once you are in compliance you are assured of adequate safety and security, and we are striving to ensure that we achieve compliance that is above the basic threshold. Not only Nigeria but even neighbouring countries will be able to benefit in term of what we are doing in training our people. Organisations like ICAO are using highly-skilled individuals from other countries to train people all over the world including Nigeria, so we are also striving to make sure that Nigerians are capable of doing that very soon.
I am very happy you made comments about the Enugu International Airport because it is something that is close to most people that are from that part of the country. What exactly is the state of the work right now, and are we likely to meet the April 2020 deadline for its reopening?
Work at the Enugu Airport is ongoing. We go there for inspection and we are working with the Enugu State Government; they are fully in the picture. The South East Governors Forum has met with the Hon. Minister of Aviation more than twice in Enugu. We are working with a particular interest group led by a very distinguished gentleman, Engineer Chris Okoye and approved and endorsed by the south governors. This is a professional job and we try not to put anything out to the public that will cause distraction. The fact remains that we are all Nigerians. Therefore, we are committed to that project. We are doing much more than the runway. Americans say “you have not seen anything yet”. There is this suspicion that there is a plan. What can we plan that is underhand about closing an airport with a bad runway? Our own brothers and sisters are there. Foreigners go in and go out. If we didn’t want to do it why did we close it? And when it does get finished I am assuring you it will be worth the while. It is also good for our own name as Nigerians that we are able to do the right thing.
About the April deadline, I have made it clear to stakeholders that delivery is important, but quality delivery is more important. If I have to keep it closed till June for a good reason I will close it till June. I closed it for safety and security, and I will keep it closed until I can assure safety and security. We are committed to April 2020 but if a force majeure intervenes (like in the case of Port Harcourt Airport that had to be closed for two years), what can one do? We are working towards end of March 2020.
Has the expansion of work on the Port Harcourt runway been abandoned?
I will call it a delayed not abandoned contract because the contractor is there. When you go there, you will see a lot of people dillydallying there. The contract is not abandoned.
Does Nigeria still have ICAO’s Cat One certification?
ICAO Certification is not about Cat One. FAA had certified Nigerian airspace as Cat One. ICAO certification of an airport is about certifying that the airport is about clean bill, in terms of safety, security and efficiency of operation. ICAO encourages every country to at least have their international airports certified. It is not for all the airports. Nigeria was the first country to do two airports in Africa. South Africa did only Johannesburg, and I think Egypt did only Cairo. We did Lagos and Abuja, and now we are working hard to do Port Harcourt and Kano. We won’t be able to do Enugu until we finish the runway, but we will do it. The comprehensive works we are doing in Enugu are aimed at Cat One certification. It is one thing to get certification and another to keep it. So, we have a permanent committee to ensure we maintain our certification.
What is the current situation of the Asaba Airport because of safety concerns?
Asaba is not my airport (LAUGHTER). But all the same, we provide these state airports with fire cover. We are getting some of these state airports on board but we provide all airports with aviation security and fire cover.
Are you getting enough budget support for all these reforms?
We are getting a lot of support in terms of budgets. Government invites us to submit problems with solutions before they can assist us. I am not complaining about that.
How do you motivate your team?
We just need people to be trained and to have the right attitude to work. Attitude is everything. You may have the best brains but with the wrong attitude, you will not achieve anything. If you have the dullest people around you, if they have the right attitude, they will learn if you train them.
So, for us, it is attitudinal change and training. But the attitudinal change is more important because we know how to conduct the training.
Can you discourage a state governor from building an airport due to viability issues? Is there any such thing as an unviable airport?
I will give a general advice and let the state governments make their choice. The general guideline is that any airport that will have less than a million passengers per annum is unviable. It used to be 500,000 but now it is a million per annum, and this is based on statistics and data, not sentiments. According to ICAO standards, for you to break even and make profit, you need at least a million persons using the airport per year.
We have some airports that have 10,000, some 20,000. But it is not everything you can judge in black and white. If you look at our population, we have very few airports. I think the challenge before us is to see how we can motivate or stimulate traffic, and that has a link to the general economy of the country.
I prefer to have the airports unviable than not to have the airports at all. The potential is there, we just need to provide the enabling environment while we wait for that time somebody needs to nurture the sector like a baby. That is the job of FAAN. Given our population, we need to cultivate these airports. I know they are unviable, but when I look at the overall national interest, it is better than not having the airports.
So, when a governor wants to build an airport, I give him information to guide him in deciding. I don’t say do it or don’t do it. It will surprise you to know that 19 out of our 22 airports are not viable. When you have twenty businesses and only two are bringing in profits, you don’t have money. But let us have the airports first and find ways of making them more viable.
How about the security of our airports, especially livestock straying into tarmacs?
We know that we have people committed to sabotaging national security. If you don’t believe in that then you have already compromised the safety of the airports. There are definite inside threats.
You cannot tell me a criminal will have heavy equipment, infiltrate our system, cut heavy cables and go without stealing. Sometimes, we just see the dead bodies of people electrocuted trying to cut cables and we send their bodies quietly to their families without making noise. But we are working very hard to fence the airports, increase patrols and install surveillance cameras.