Expert flays ‘mismanagement’ of air service agreements
An aviation expert and former spokesman of the defunct Nigeria Airways, Mr. Chris Aligbe, has decried what he called the mismanagement of the Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASAs) Nigeria signed with many countries of the world.
Aligbe lamented that since the liquidation of the Nigeria Airways, “authorities of the Ministry of Aviation have arbitrarily allocated slots to various foreign airlines to the detriment of the local airlines.”
BASA is a pact between two nations which allows international commercial air transport services between their territories. In the heyday of the Nigeria Airways, the country signed BASAs with many countries which enabled the carrier to fly into their territories.
However, Aligbe, in an interview with Daily Trust in Lagos, declared that with the death of the Nigeria Airways, the country’s BASAs have been mismanaged by the Ministry of Aviation which took over their management.
“I am sure the Ministry of Aviation was not even prepared for that job function and it is a technical thing, it is not just a simple thing that you get into and start managing properly. So, those who took it over right from 2002 have mismanaged it in a manner that our industry is suffering. They’ve thrown away so many frequencies to foreign airlines, denying our own airlines the opportunity of growth,” he said.
Aligbe argued that the situation underscores the need for the reintroduction of the Nigeria Airways for the country to effectively respond to the various air service agreements it entered with other countries.
He also called for the establishment of a slot allocation committee to handle slot allocations to foreign airlines.
Aligbe, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Melujane Consult said, “So our BASAs have been mismanaged. And recently, the ministry wrote that the airlines should not pay BASA royalty again. I don’t know where the authority to do that came from, but what it means is that we are losing tremendously in this country.
“Even if you remove BASA, you establish slots, and countries and airports are making more money from slot allocations than they make from royalty. We have written to the Ministry many times that they should let us have the slot allocation system, but they have not acted on it.
“So today we are losing more revenue than we should have gotten from foreign airlines, which is to the advantage of those airlines’ countries.”
Aligbe believed the situation can be addressed with the establishment of a slot allocation committee independent of the Aviation ministry and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority. “It will be a completely independent commercial establishment. We should put in place a system that would earn our country the money we should earn from slots. Other countries are earning a lot of money from slots and we are not earning anything.
“A national carrier would respond to all our BASA rights; it would reciprocate the BASA rights. A national carrier is long overdue in our country,” he maintained.