Nigeria Air: Stakeholder carpet Sirika over stakeholders’ forum
…Expresses pessimism for aviation sector
A stakeholder in the nation’s aviation industry has condemned the recent aviation stakeholders meeting held in Abuja, stating that the gathering was a jamboree.
The Minister of State on Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika had hosted a one-day stakeholders’ forum to address grey areas surrounding the failure of the Nigeria Air project initiated by the Federal Government, through his ministry.
But the National Secretary of the Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP) Comrade Abdulrasaq Saidu said the stakeholders meeting was a jamboree meant to achieve nothing.
Speaking with journalists in his office at Ikeja, Comrade Saidu said there was nothing new that the minister discussed with stakeholders in Abuja and urged him to tackle the significant critical problems facing the industry.
Saidu said ANAP decided to shun the meeting as a result of lack of focus by the minister towards finding the lasting solutions to the myriads of the problem in the aviation industry.
He said the aviation industry has remained stagnant by taking one step forward and two steps backward adding that the industry was yearning for the infrastructure development beyond commissioning of the terminal building.
He urged the minister to address the issue of the Abuja control tower which has been blocked with the construction of the Chinese terminal.
According to Saidu, the state of fire service personnel has remained an eyesore while the campaign of carrying arms by aviation security personnel have become a political gimmick.
According to the ANAP scribe, there has not been any development in the aviation industry in the past three years, condemning the nontransparent way of recruitment of the personnel into aviation agencies by the minister.
According to the union leader, instead of employing based on geopolitical zones, people were being employed from one particular zone from the North without considering the quota system.
Saidu further explained that since the past three years, that minister of State for Aviation Hadi Sirika has been shouting for the establishment of Maintain, Repair and Overhaul facilities MRO in the country pointing that till now nothing concrete has been done.
According to Saidu, only Aero Contractors has a hangar facility stressing that the liquidated Nigeria Airways hangar which would have served all airlines today was given out for peanut by previous administrations.
He noted that only God has been saving Nigeria airlines from the crash as no critical safety infrastructure was on the ground while some personnel in the fire service of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria were not trained accordingly.
