The Nigerian aviation industry is in financial dire strait as all agencies under it are unable to carry out their statutory functions and fulfill their condition of services to their staff, investigations have revealed.
Apart from the fact that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, is unable to carry out training of its personnel regularly and as and when due, the old staff in all the agencies too are being owed several months of allowances.
Besides, there was an initial claim that some of the agencies as presently constituted owe workers some few months of salaries while others are struggling to pay. But further investigations revealed that apart from salaries; they are not up-to-date in payment of allowances, pension and offering training to their staff.
A source close to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, confided in our correspondent that things like furniture, children educational fund, basic, hazardous, utility, housing, outfit, proficiency allowances are owed workers while training for staff has not been conducted for years in the agency.
The story is not different in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, as sources claimed that the agency owed staff who embarked on training within and outside the country over N1bn. Also, its pensioners have not been paid regularly and are being owed several months of pension arrears. The paucity of funds in all the agencies is attributed to the regular "illegal collection of funds from the agency by the Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah."
The climax of frauds in the agencies was the revelation of acquisition of two armoured BMW760 series at a whopping sum of N255m for the minister by NCAA, which the Bureau for Public Procurement, BPP, said did not follow due process. Analysts say the prices of the cars were massively inflated, but the spokesman to Oduah, Mr. Joe Obi insisted that the prices were not bloated.
Obi told our correspondent that the cars' prices were never jerked up by the minister and even the NCAA. But, if any of the agencies is spending above N100m, such spending must have the approval of the Federal Executive Council, which the agency and the ministry failed to comply with in this situation.
Just recently, a Non- Governmental Organisation, NGO, The Patriot in a petition to Mr. President had accused Oduah of perpetuating fraud in the sector.
The petition signed for it by one Rose Ibekaku and made available to our correspondent, called for the immediate sack of the Minister after accusing her of corruption, incompetence and negligence of duties. Ibekaku in the letter to the presidency accused Oduah of collecting monthly the sum of N158m from the accounts of aviation agencies like the NAMA, NCAA, FAAN and others under her ministry.
Ibekaku in the memo alleged that the deductions have successfully crippled the operations of the agencies concerned to the extent that paying staff entitlements have recently become a herculean task. Oduah was also purported to have a stake in Price Waters Coopers, PWC, which audited various aspects of four agencies at N250m each.
Source: Aviation workers groan under unpaid salaries, allowances (http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/aviation-workers-groan-under-unpaid-salaries-allowances/)