“NAMA Is Not Overstaffed…”

ICAO security audit is around the corner. How prepared is NAMA?

We are working together with the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). NCAA is actually the arrowhead. We are all working with the Ministry of Aviation. We have attained a level in this industry that we cannot go down. And I can assure you that the security will turn out well. Even though the bulk of security issues rest with FAAN, whatever that has to do with us will be done. Whatever way we need to support them with; we will also do that. We are all working together.

What are the challenges NAMA is facing?

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 prioritize. 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. We have issues and by the grace of God we are moving ahead and addressing them.

Can NAMA sustain itself if today the Federal Government stops giving it allocation?

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. But the difference between NAMA and the Federal 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, 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 prioritize. And even for us we know we are getting to that point. Before the price of 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 want 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.

There are allegations that NAMA is over-staffed. Is this true?

We are a little above 2,000 personnel. It is 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. 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 and at each point in time 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. 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. So because of that we may eventually have to look at how we can address the issues of engineers. The ATCs are not the only ones. If I give you N1 million today, by tomorrow you will say N1.5 million will be much better. It is a natural thing. I don’t want to look at them as people who are never satisfied. What I feel and tried to make them see is what can be sustained. We need to do what is sustainable that will not have a negative effect.