Nigeria’s Airspace Is ‘unsafe, Dangerous’

83 years after, experts score Nigerian aviation low

Local aviation experts have scored the aviation sector low after taking a cursory look at its performance in the last 83 years of operation.

Speaking at the World Media Presentation of this year’s aviation week in Lagos on Monday, the President, Aviation Roundtable, Capt. Dele Ore, said that the sector had a long way to go in meeting up with its counterparts in other parts of the world.

According to him, the sector has failed in evolving strong airlines that can compete favourably with rivals in other countries.

He said that it was a shame that the country did not have a carrier that could be allowed to fly to the United States of America.

He said, “Our local airlines can not develop new routes. Our Search-and-Rescue System is nothing to write home about. It is a shame that we don’t have an airline that can be allowed to enter the US. Only recently, we were told that Nigeria came on board through crooked means by the same government. We could see that after Nigeria Airways was illegally liquidated, we have not been able to raise anything close to it.”

The Chairman, Airline Operators of Nigeria, Dr. Steve Mahonwu, said that since October 27, when the first flight came from Cairo, Egypt, into the country through Kano, the aviation sector had been coming up slowly until the national carrier was liquidated.

“The defunct Nigeria Airways can be likened to a stolen good. One day, its owner will find it. We saw how the Nigerian Airways was dismembered and shared among a few people. One day, it will return to the owner.”

A former member of the Ministerial Committee on Airspace, Mr. Sam Akerele, said that although the Paul Dike Committee was modest to say that the sector needed more than N80bn to fix, it needed more than N100bn, looking at the level of infrastructure decay.

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