By our reporter
A new wave of changes are about to take place in the aviation industry as the Federal Government has concluded plans to cancel all concession agreements entered into by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).
It would immediately terminate the activities of the concessionaires operating at the airports.
The FG has also resolved to privatize the airports before the end of the year. As a result of this, it is studying reports on the issue in order to find the most effective way to handle it.
our sourced gathered from a source at the ministry of aviation that government reached this decision when it realized that set objectives in the agreements are not being realized.
Instead, it is thought that the concessionaires are exploiting FAAN.
The concession agreement was meant to boost the revenue of FAAN. It was believed that private companies partnering with the agency would enhance innovation and transparency and ensure that all the cash points from both aeronautical and non-aeronautical sources would be managed in such a way to increase revenue.
A senior ministry official told THISDAY that a body was set up to investigate all the agreements FAAN entered into in the last five years.
After investigation, the body recommended that instead of boosting the revenue of the agency, the concessionaires have left the organization in dire financial straits.
A source said that the workers of FAAN, through the unions, have decried the activities of the concessionaires and have variously written petitions to the FG requesting an appraisal of the activities of the concessionaires.
It was pointed out in the petitions that almost all the agreement FAAN had were against the interest of the agency.
On the privatization of the airports, a source said that the Minister of Aviation Fidelia Njeze is “at this moment deliberating on the terms of privatization; whether it will be partial or complete privatization.
“But government is likely to go for partial privatization for security reasons, but all the necessary information needed have been made available by the immediate past ministers; but concessioning through public-private partnership may be dropped because it did not work with the domestic terminal at the Murtala Muhammed Interna-tional Airport, Lagos, where a concessionaire in charge of a terminal saw himself as an owner of an airport.”
The source also said that the ministry is carefully studying the reports to avoid hasty decisions, noting that before the end of July government would come out with a final decision on the method of privatization.
He disclosed that instead of privatizing viable airports as was planned in the past, the privatization process will be done in zones.
“It will be done in such a way that each investor would take all the airports in each zone, including the so-called viable and non-viable ones. The truth is that the ones deemed to be unviable today can be revived and made viable and FAAN will still be there to supervise the airports and also monitor the activities of the investors,” the source explained.
FAAN workers who spoke with THISDAY on the planned cancellation said that it would be a welcome development because according to them, since the concessionaires took over major cash points of FAAN, the agency has been losing money.
“In the past FAAN never owed its workers but since these concessionaires took charge of the revenue sources of the authority, we have been finding it difficult to pay workers.
“Look at the airports; we are no longer maintaining them because the funds are not there. It was planned that we should be getting something on top of what we were generating if these revenue sources were concessioned. But it has become obvious that the FAAN workers were doing better,” said a source.
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