9th June, 2011
Jobless licenced Nigerian pilots numbering about 30 yesterday stormed the premises of the Nigerian Association of Aircraft and Pilots, NAAPE, to protest the influx of expatriates in the country’s aviation industry.
The protesters, who demonstrated at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria, said that the invasion of expatriate pilots and engineers has rendered them jobless.
They said that they are licenced to fly planes in Nigeria but not given the opportunity by the airlines.
One of the protesting unemployed pilots who spoke with journalists alleged that aeronautic graduate engineers who are not even type rated on any aircraft are given employment by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to issue license to aircraft maintenance engineers.
The aggrieved protester also said that the NCAA had not conducted any license examinations for upcoming aviation practitioners for almost a year, stressing that the situation was not good for the development of the sub-sector.
He said: “With a deeper research, by design of their profession, aeronautic personnel are supposed to be in the factory where aircraft are being manufactured. Aeronautical engineers are destroying the future of the licensed aircraft maintenance engineers in the country.â€
—Simon Ateba
