Airports concession reaches final stage despite unions objection

The Minister of Aviation Senator Hadi Sirika says, the move for the concession of the four major airports in the country has reached the advertisement stage and the finalisation of the process has been scheduled for February 2022.

This announcement has elicited reactions from stakeholders and a blame game among the leadership of unions in the aviation sector. In 2016 when the aviation development roadmap was approved, it was greeted with series of protests from the unions in the industry.

Protests were ignited with the concession of the four major international airports; Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Port Harcourt as part of the roadmap. This perhaps may have been due to the lack of understanding of what the concession would be.

However, with series of stakeholder engagements, the picture became clearer and the agitations reduced from the streets to the tables for discussions as unions gave other options to a concession.

Two stakeholders at the just concluded Airport Business Summit in Lagos, Chris Aligbe and Daniel Young believed concession was the way forward if airports were to be more viable and efficient.

“Unless we concession our airports, Nigeria will not join the comity of nations with world-class airports”. ” Having studied the 58 cases that FAAN had as a result of concession my objective then became, how can this be avoided so that we don’t run into the same pitfall?” the stakeholders respectively said.

The unions say, they were not opposed to concession but came up with options of greenfield, build, operate and transfer and corporatization, insisting that if the government does not consider these options and go the way of concession, it must ensure the welfare of staff were taken care of 100%.

This the Minister of Aviation Senator Hadi Sirika had acceded to. “If there is one job loss as a result of concession, I will stop it”.

Sen. Sirika said, there was a clog in the wheels of the concession process as the unions were not forthcoming with their grievances or observations despite being handed the full Outline Business Case (OBC) for over seven months, explaining that, to carry the unions along in the process and for transparency, two representatives from the unions were included in Committee.

However, for over four years since the onset of the process, the unions seem to be feet dragging on the matter. The alleged failure by the unions representatives in the committee to discuss the OBC with their leadership has created problems within.

National President, Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN), Comrade Illitrus Ahmadu who agreed that concession was the way forward, frowned at the recent action of some of the union leaders.

“I don’t get any briefing from my representative in the committee, it is better to go on with the government to negotiate the best way out of this situation for our members, antagonism at this stage is not the solution”.

One of the unions represented in the concession committee and Chairman, ATSSSAN in the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Comrade Ahmed Danjuma denied the unions ever agreeing to concession saying they were still in the committee because the aviation roadmap was not on concession alone, adding that, their position had always been “NO” to a concession.

“Throughout the stakeholders’ engagement with the honourable minister, the position of the unions has always been “No” to concession, the OBC has not been tabled by the committee members to digest and every NAC meeting, we give our report on the workings of the committee”.

It remains to be seen if the unions will address their internal wrangling on the subject matter and come out in full accord to let the government know their stand as the final date to close discussion on concession had been made known.