Concession only nonviable airports, Aviation union tells FG

The Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria branch on Tuesday advised the Federal Government to concession only the nonviable airports in the country.
The union gave the advice in a statement jointly signed by its National Chairman, Rasaki Ope, and Secretary, Emeka Njoku.
The government had indicated interest to concession the Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt Airports towards increasing their capacity and efficiency.
The union urged the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, to focus on wooing investors for the remaining 18 airports instead of cherry-picking the viable ones for concession.
The statement said: “The minister mentioned lack of management performance. If he feels the present management are not competent, he should bring good hands to manage the airports.
“We want to posit that, these four viable airports are being managed by Nigerians over the years and it was graded Category A and not foreigners.”
The unionists also noted that concessioning the airports might have security implications, which must be taken into consideration.
According to the unionists, security agents should, therefore, be allowed to investigate the activities of all potential investors.
They argued that previous concession agreements between the government and Bi-Courtney Aviation Services and MAEVIS Nigeria Limited did not achieve the desired results.
They said: “For the avoidance of doubt, Bi-Courtney Aviation Services they are referring to as a good example of airport concession through Public Private Partnership is not an airport operator as wrongly claimed but a terminal operator.
“Since Bi-Courtney has been operating the terminal, it has been one court case or the other with the FAAN and its purported plan to take over the General Aviation Terminal claiming it was part of the concession agreement.
“The company has refused to remit what is due to FAAN up to date for the services it has all along been enjoying from the authority.”
The unionists said the concession agreement between FAAN and MAEVIS on the collection of revenue also led to series of court cases.
They, therefore, urged the Federal Government to retrace its step as regards to the planned concession of the airports.