New Telegraph

Experts: Revenue sharing review’ll hurt NCAA

The Federal Government has been urged to strengthen the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in its oversight function. This is coming as stakeholders have advised the Federal Government to jettison calls to review the sharing revenue to the aviation regulatory body.

 

It would be recalled that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) was established by Decree 49 of 1999 of the statutory responsibilities of ensuring regulating, monitoring and promotion of the safety, security, economic and reliability of air navigation oversight in line with   International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard and recommended practices.

 

Prior to 1989, the regulations of the aviation industry as well as provision of air traffic services were carried out by the Civil Aviation Department (CAD) of the Federal Ministry of Aviation.

 

Sequel to the adoption of the National policy on Civil Aviation of 1988 by the Federal Government, the Federal Civil Aviation Authority (FCAA) was established under Decree 8 of 1990 as an Aviation regulatory body and took over the function of CAD.

 

However, this was in addition to the Nigerian Airports Authority (NAA) which had been earlier carved out of the CAD in 1976 to manage Nigerian Airports.

 

Towards the end of 1995, the government undertook a re-organisation of some government parastatals in the aviation industry and as a consequence, the FCAA was scrapped. New Directorates of Safety Regulation and Monitoring and Economic Regulatory and Monitoring were established in the Federal Ministry of Aviation, to replace the Safety and Economic function of the defunct FCAA while Air Traffic Services and Aerotels department were merged with the former NAA to form Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.

 

The creation of the agency illustrates the importance the government places on safety which led to it establishing the aviation regulatory body as an independent, autonomous critical aviation agency.

 

An aircraft pilot, who spoke to New Telegraph on condition of anonymity, said: “One of the ways to guarantee the autonomy of NCAA is the way it is funded. NCAA is funded by five per cent ticket and cargo service charge, which means that it won’t depend on government for its sustenance.

 

“But since 2015 the agency was categorised as revenue generating agency and made it compulsory for the agency to pay 20-25 per cent of its gross revenue to the federal government.” He commended the supervisory role of the Ministry of Aviation, adding that the regulatory body needs to be given more powers to earn the sobriquet of ‘independence.’

 

He reiterated that no minister had given the agency the ‘freedom’ it requires than the current Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika. This freedom, according to him, has allowed the agency to save huge billions of naira at a period many of the agencies are going cap in hand to seek loans for payment of workers’ salaries following the outbreak of COVID-19 that impacted the revenues of many of the aviation parastatals. NCAA is funded by five per cent ticket and cargo service charge, which means that it won’t depend on government for its sustenance.

 

But since 2015 the agency was categorised as revenue generating agency and made it compulsory for the agency to pay 20-25 per cent of its gross revenue to the federal government. Not a few agree that the regulatory authority ought not be categorised as revenue generating agency. NCAA needs the funds for the continuous training of its manpower.

 

It is also remarkable to note that that the NCAA needs to scale up salary for inspectors and other technical staff in order to attract the best to the agency so that the agency would be able to provide better oversight.

 

Despite calls for review of revenue sharing formular, experts have called on the Federal Government to shelve the idea of tinkering with the agency’s revenue earning, stressing that the idea would expose NCAA to corruption and inefficiency that would have monumental effects on safety, aircraft inspection, remuneration of key officials and highly capital intensive training of critical staff of the authority.

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