Nigeria Air: stakeholders carpet Sirika over stakeholders forum
Stakeholders in the nation’s aviation industry have 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 major 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 problem in the aviation industry.
He said the aviation industry has remained stagnant by taking one step forward and two steps backwards adding that the industry was yearning for the infrastructure development beyond commissioning of 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 have not been any development in the aviation industry in the past three years, condemning the non transparent way of recruitment of the personnel into aviation agencies by the minister.
According to the union leader, instead of employing based on geo political zones, people were being employed from one particular zone from 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 crash as no critical safety infrastructure was on ground while some personnel in the fire service of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria were not trained accordingly.
A participant who attended the forum stated that nothing new was discussed at the meeting, apart from what has been known by Nigerians already.
The stakeholder who spoke under the condition of anonymity said there was no need for the forum since the issue of national carrier has already been suspended.
He added that, from inception the project has continued to attract controversies because of the way it was being handled.
Since the suspension of the national carrier project, most stakeholders have started to loose confidence in the system following the sudden launch and suspension within an interval of few months
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