NCAT to sign MoU with CAA of Sierra Leone

Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo

Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) is set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU) with the Civil Aviation Authority of Sierra Leone and has expressed the college’s intent to continuously improve to maintain its Regional Training Centre of Excellence ( RTCE) status. The Rector of the college, Captain Abdulsalami Mohammed made this known over the weekend in Zaria, Kaduna State as he graduated no fewer than 60 participants from various courses in the institution including journalists from the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents ( LAAC). Captain Mohammed who said that its signage of the MoU with the Sierra Leone CAA was due in part because of its improved status as a Regional Training Centre of Excellence ( RTCE) said the event to boost training partnership between both countries will hold on the 5th of February. At an earlier interview, the NCAT Rector said that the school was making a lot of efforts to partner. “We are making a lot of efforts to collaborate with some of the universities around. I just returned from Tunisia and I was actually asked to join the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) team between Nigeria and Tunisia, at the request of Tunisia. Tunisia wants a representative of NCAT to be part of the team because the country wants to collaborate with the institution. So, we are making efforts on this issue. We have the Vice-Chancellor of Madonna University with us in 2018 and it wants to set up an aircraft maintenance engineering school there and they have approached us for help in seeing this dream come to reality.” On the combined graduation ceremony, the Rector expressed pride to have graduated such large amount of students and was joyous of the sponsorship from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria ( FAAN) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority ( NCAA). The 60 graduates include two (2) Gambians for the Air Traffic Control Refresher Special Course No.1 (ACRFS-01); three (3) participants for Aviation English for Fire Fighters (ETP-01). Other includes eight (8) participants from Maintenance and Repairs of Diesel Engine Generator Course No 2 ( MRDEG-02) and forty-seven (47) participants of the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents ( LAAC) Course in Basic, Advance, Management and Refresher courses. Captain Abdulsalami also stated that with the college’s ICAO RTCE status it has to be up m doing to retain the status including developing of training packages. “ICAO that gives you the RTCE status has a lot of expectations from you. There are a lot of things you have to do to retain the status and if you don’t do, they will yank it off from you, one of such is that you have to develop ICAO Training Package (ITP), you have to be able to train people from outside the country since it is for region. You are not a local organization, but now a regional organization”, he said.