The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has been relocated many times from Lagos to Abuja depending on the Minister on the helms of affairs without considering the cost implication, availability of offices the staff will be accommodated in Abuja and the economic sense in it. This has continued for some years now. The last relocation was done by the former Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.
However, recently, precisely on January 18, 2024, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo directed that FAAN should relocate from Abuja to Lagos. This has generated discussions among stakeholders in the Nigerian aviation industry.
The Federal Government while defending the decision explained that the planned relocation of the FAAN is a pragmatic administrative step by the President Bola Tinubu led administration to improve operational efficiency and reduce operating costs and that it was not political.
He further argued that Lagos is the hub of aviation business in Nigeria, as a result the Federal Government decided to relocate FAAN to the state.
Some of the aviation stakeholders who spoke to Ontimenewsng.com on the matter are of the opinion that the Minister was right to direct FAAN to relocate from Abuja to Lagos in view of the fact that Lagos office can adequately and conveniently accommodate all the agency’s staff instead of spending millions Naira to rent offices. In a nutshell the Minister’s directive according to them was long overdue and logical.
Speaking on the issue, a Professor of Strategy and Development at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies, Prof. Anthony Kila. said that the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo’s directive to relocate the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria(FAAN) to Lagos was a decision that was not only long overdue but that it was also logical.
According to him, “My view on the relocation of the FAAN is that it is a good decision that is even long overdue., logic and facts support the idea.”
He asserted that the decision to relocate FAAN offices to Abuja was an ill thought general political move that did not factor in cost process and sustainability.
Kila noted that the directive to bring FAAN back to Lagos, a place where it has offices from Abuja where it has no offices is only logical.
In his words, “Those against the move are either being mischievous or moved by a peculiar kind of Nigerian anxiety that stems from our frail and untrusted institutional and national fabric.”
“The problem is neither FAAN nor Lagos, it is Nigeria,” he added.
The former Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Roland, who spoke on the development, told Ontimenewsng.com that it made no sense in the first place to have moved the head office of FAAN to Abuja
He argued that most of the activities of FAAN are in Lagos and that besides; the agency has structures that can accommodate all the staff compared to Abuja where the agency would have to rent offices to house the workers.
Besides, Iyayi , who is also the Chief Executive Officer, TopBrass Aviation, pointed out that the cost of relocating and accommodating staff in Abuja, where the offices are not enough is very huge compared to returning the headquarters to Lagos , the hub aviation activities where offices are in abundance .
According to him, “Relocating it back to Lagos where FAAN activities are concentrated makes more sense than allowing the headquarters to be in Abuja where FAAN has less activities to carry out.”
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer, Centurion Aviation Security and Safety Consult, Grp. Capt. John Ojikutu (rtd) , said that the directive by the Minister to relocate FAAN from Abuja to Lagos is not because Abuja cannot accommodate the number of staff posted but the costs of accommodation and travelling of the management executives ,which they say is unbearable.
He pointed out that the people behind these movements are the political office holders in the administration of government, especially the Minister and officials of the Ministry, who according to him should have nothing to do with the management, administrations and operations of the agencies.
According to him, “The costs of the accommodation and rate of movement should be left in the hands of the agency’s management.”
The Aviation Security Consultant argued that the movement of the FAAN Headquarters to wherever cannot stop what he called economic waste except the Ministry stops its interferences on the management and the administration of the agency
Ojikutu, known for his frankness pointed out that while in Lagos, the Managing Director and the Directors were making incessant and very unnecessary trips to the Ministry in Abuja and that it did not stop for the period the headquarters was in Abuja and will not stop on its return to Lagos or to anywhere.
“What can stop the economic wastes is the establishment of the Management Board. What Minister Keyamo is doing is not different from what Sirika did and the economic waste cannot stop. There will be substitutes in the cost of hotel accommodation for visiting executives on houses rented in Abuja while the headquarters was there and that too will not stop the Minister and the ministry officials from coming to Lagos at the expense of the FAAN management.
“The solution is to ensure that the Management Boards are established to curb the excessive interference of the Minister on the agency’s management wherever the FAAN headquarters and other aviation agencies are located,” he said.
A stakeholder, who spoke on the matter on the condition of anonymity in view of the political dimension it has taken, said that that he does not have any grudge with the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo for directing the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to relocate to Lagos , saying that it is the right thing to do.
The Minister, he said did the right thing because he singled out only FAAN for the relocation because the agency does not have a befitting office and it is only Lagos office that can accommodate all the staff in FAAN compared to Abuja where the Federal Government will have to use public fund to rent offices in Abuja, while the offices in Lagos are not occupied.
He argued that it makes no economic and financial sense for FAAN staff to be squatting or renting offices in Abuja when it has more than enough offices in Lagos.
This, he said, “would amount to Penny wise Pound foolish”
To buttress, his point, he cited the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), whose corporate headquarter in Lagos was demolished by the former Minister of Aviation, Senator, Hadi Sirika and forced to relocate to Abuja without proper planning under the guise that he wanted to use the land where the office was located to expand the apron of the new Chinese terminal.
He lamented that as he speaks to Ontimenewsng.com, NSIB staff are still looking for offices, while some are still in Lagos squatting because the air incident and accident investigation body’s movement was not economically well thought out by the then Minister of Aviation .
“The Minister of Aviation &Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo in my opinion came to right the wrong. It will be better to relocate to Lagos where FAAN has enough offices to accommodate all the staff and enough spaces to construct a befitting corporate headquarters”
He, however, laid the blame on the door steps of the previous Ministers and FAAN Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers.
He said FAAN is the owner of the land all other agencies built their headquarters on, adding that if all the precious Ministers of Aviation and past Managing Director of the organisation had built a befitting headquarters in Lagos in the first place, the movement of FAAN headquarters from time to time by different Minister would not have occurred.
He wondered why FAAN would allocate land to other agencies such as the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency(NAMA), Nigeria Meteorological Agency(NiMet) to build befitting headquarters for their respective organisations and cannot provide a space for itself.He said that it is even a shame that FAAN is still maintaining the offices that were ceded to them by the defunct Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) in 1979
About The Author
