Stakeholders back review of airport concession

Stakeholders in the Nigerian aviation industry have backed the Federal Government‘s attempt to review some concession agreements in the sector.

Those spoken to by our correspondent observed that majority of the concession initiatives were skewed in favour of the concessionaires at the expense of the country.

Also, Mr. Ikechi Uko, an aviation analyst, said that some of the projects in the sector were concessioned because government showed incompetence in handling them.

He declared that the myriad of challenges in the sector could not be attributed to concessions, but the process followed in concessioning them by the government.

He expressed that processes leading to most of the agreements were not open to the public, positing that these had led to avoidable crises in the industry.

Uko, however, urged the government not to tamper with the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL0, emphasising that the terminal operator had brought class to the Nigerian aviation industry with the Murtala Muhammed Airport Two (MMA2) terminal.

He noted that there might be some grey areas in the agreement with BASL, but appealed to the government to allow the terminal operator run out its years as stipulated in the concession agreement.

He added: “That is why I am saying that if you ambush people, you are likely to get a wrong result. If there was an open bill that was tendered and people actually won, then, you can say this was done in the best global practises, but if it is just concession to your friends, you are likely to have crisis as the years go by.

“I know there were problems with the concession agreement (BASL), but you should not bring it down. If you review everything, I think we should leave that one because for now, we don’t have any airport that is at that level. It might not sound legal, but to me, it makes sense.”

Besides, General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Comrade Olainka Abioye, said that the directive of the Minister of State for Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika to the management of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to review the concessions in the sector was in order.

Abioye insisted that most of the agreements were lopsided and negated the principle of fair play, alleging that majority of them impoverished the industry, rather than adding value to it.

He insisted that the “Nigerian factors” in every concession agreements reached in the sector made them a failure right from the outset, warning that if they were not reviewed, they would run the industry aground.

Abioye agreed that most of the concessions went through legal intricacies before both parties put pen to papers, but decried that the legal department officials of FAAN were compelled to sign most of the agreements by some unscrupulous government officials who have interest in most of the companies that apply for concessions.