FAAN: PROBLEMS BEYOUND BUDGETARY ALLOCATION

sincerely, FAAN problem goes beyond budgetary allocation from the
federal government because the organization itself lacks transparency.
It has not been able to convince investors due to the non availability
of a verifiable financial statement over the years, considering it’s a
high yield revenue generating organization, coupled with the frequent
changes in the ministry’s leadership. The Ministers have all had
divergent policy trust for the organization, while implementation
always ended on the drawing board.

Also, almost all the concession agreements entered into by the agency
ended up being messy, because they were given to the privileged few
bypassing the rudiments of fair, open and transparent bidding.

The present minister used the first three quarters of last year to
plan, the last quarter ended with the remodeling toga being used
fervently to assuage the traveling public discomfort and its
concomitants inefficiency and insecurity.

The foreign carriers who have benefited immensely from the anemic
state of Nigerian carriers and have been able to get extra frequencies
by offering, frequent flyers, exotic visit to their head office and
country, GSA partnership e.t.c, to our officials, had to send a
delegation to the minister complaining about the state of our
airports, as expected the word remodeling was once again flagged by
the minister while also hammering on capital flight-a self inflicted
policy.

The Ethiopians, who have never claimed to be the giant of Africa, but
are real giants in aviation, with a vibrant national carrier, has
invested in a Togolese based carrier, to gain access to the West Coast
market while at the same time nurturing our only IATA certified
carrier ‘Air Nigeria’, the Ethiopian Airport Enterprise, recently
announced $27.8 million remodeling of the Addis-Ababa international
airport without necessarily parroting remodeling for close to a year.