Mr. Saleh Dunoma is the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria. In this interview, he lauded some policies of the Federal Government that had boosted traffic across airports in the country. He also knocked ratings of airports by non-professionals. ABIOLA ODUTOLA reports:
How would you assess the Federal Government’s new policy of issuing ‘visa on arrival’ to foreigners, especially investors? Is it achieving the desired result?
The policy is a welcome development as Visa on arrival has been on the increase in the country as a lot of people are encouraged to travel.
How does it work?
They send an application online and by the time they arrive here, they just submit their passports and they are issued visa. This will encourage people because it makes life and travel easy. Before the introduction of visa on arrival, in some countries where we don’t have embassy, it makes life difficult for people to travel. It will continue to increase. There was a time the Canadian government removed their embassy from Nigeria; so we had to go to Ghana to get visa. If there was visa on arrival, why do I need to spend a night in Accra just to get visa? With visa on arrival, you send your application; once you get approval, you travel.
How would you rate the state of Nigerian airports?
Our airports are safe, sound and of international standard.
But some international rating firms have rated them among the worst in Africa and the world?
I have seen other people rating airports but I don’t consider that kind of rating professional because you go there, look at an airport and make comments and you say you are rating airports.
The people that rate the airports are the professional bodies, either the Civil Aviation Authority of the country, the Airports Council International or the International Civil Aviation Organisation. These are the people that have the tools to rate the airports. There are standard tools through which the ICAO, ACI and the NCAA rate the airports. NCAA visits the airports every day and come up with ratings. These agencies are specialised.
What is this rating by agencies and firms like?
The agencies have experts in safety, fire, rescue, security, facilitation and aerodrome standards. They will go to the airport and look at it. These experts look at specific things and come back with ratings. After these, they will tell you if it is below standard and what needs to be improved upon.
After that, do they come back to check the compliance rate of their recommendations?
Yes, the implementation of the plans is done under safety standards. For example, the Airport Excellence and Safety that we did in Abuja and Lagos, experts came from various countries and they looked at the airports.
These were experts in aerodrome and other specialisations. These are people that are qualified and have certificate. They will come to the airport and we allow them access to everywhere and they will access and see the areas that are lagging.
They will look to see if what is on ground tallies with things that are in the books. They tell you areas you need to improve on. They will tell you if the airport is okay in terms of safety, security and aerodrome standards, among others. They come back with corrective action plan and they will be told what they will do about it and during what time frame.
If they are things that cannot be done, then aeronautical study needs to be carried out to say these are the procedures to take, to go around the issue. There are no differences in the ratings and the assessments; whether it is done, for instance, in Maiduguri, New York or anywhere else. It is the same people and they will do it.
If there are no differences in the ratings and assessments, would it be fair to rate airports in developing nations alongside the ones in developed nations?
Airports are categorised and assessments are done within the categories. If you say your critical aircraft is 747, then we will assess you based on that critical aircraft and that standard. Do you have enough manpower to handle 747? Do you have enough runways? Do you have enough parking space? Are the signs okay? Can the pilot see them? So these are the assessments of an airport.
What is the update on the proposed concession of the airports?
Work is on-going and there is the need to develop a business case. We have consultants that are working. What they need to do is to look at the current situation; what do we have? How do we do it? There is a lot of documentation going on at the moment and the consultants are working.
Have you met with the investors?
When they finish the development of business case and then come up with the entire documentation that is needed, then we can now present it to investors.
How can we make our airports viable?
That is our focus in the upcoming Airport Council International conference. The theme is, ‘Business transformation for sustainable development of African airports.’ We are discussing how to make our airports commercially viable in order to sustain our operations.
Before this time, you will recall that most African airports were developed by government and they were not commercial. Even in Nigeria, until recently, we collect subvention from government to run the airports, but from the evolution of airport management, what is happening all over? Airports are self-funded.
How does Nigeria benefit from this?
ACI is looking at how to assist airports to sustain businesses in order to make sure they pay for their cost of running. We will talk to experts on what are the best practices or what we need to do in order to make our airports self-sustaining.
The advantage to Nigeria is that, we can go there in numbers. All the operators in Nigeria are invited. They can come and listen to these experts and take home what they want.
The other thing is that, once the conference starts, it is business throughout. Exhibitors will be there. So anyone that has a particular interest will now look at the programme and choose which one to key into and take advantage of it.
