6th May, 2013
In the wake of recent crisis between Rivers State Government and Nigerian aviation authorities over a jet purchased with Rivers State money but registered in the United States and held in trust by an American bank, one vital detail that seems to have escaped public attention is the fact that the crisis is simply symptomatic of an aviation industry still at infancy.
If the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, is to be believed, in 2012, there were 71 private and state-owned jets in Nigeria with only ten of them registered in the country while the rest were registered in foreign lands such as South Africa, the United States and others.
Foreign registered means the aircraft is registered with the Civil Aviation Authority of another sovereign state or country, while Nigeria registered means it is under the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority’s registry of aircraft.
Any aircraft that has 5N written on its tail means it is registered in Nigeria since the call sign 5N was allocated to Nigeria by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO. In concrete terms, when an aircraft is registered outside the shores of Nigeria, it means the country of registration has the oversight function over such an aircraft.
A jet registered in South Africa, for instance, but which operates in Nigerian skies, simply means it has complied with some documentations at the NCAA and has been cleared to fly in and out of our country’s airspace. It means, such a jet can be in Nigeria today and elsewhere the next day. It just pays for landing, parking, overflying, fueling and other fees determined by the NCAA, NAMA and FAAN.
In Nigeria, a private jet owner is not required by law to be a holder of an Air Operator’s Certificate known as AOC. All he needs is to register the aircraft with the NCAA and sign an agreement with a company with a valid AOC to be able to operate the jet.
The AOC holder is therefore responsible for the maintenance and every other thing regarding safety standards in Nigeria. And if there are violations, it is the AOC holder that bears the brunt.
According to NCAA, all the jet registered in Nigeria are registered under the ownership of a company.
We find it shocking that wealthy Nigerians, especially state governments, buy jets with state money but register them in foreign lands and pay fees in those countries.
We believe that explanations about insurance premium for aircraft registered in Nigeria being higher because Nigeria is a high risk country are not tenable, especially when the plane belongs to the government, state of federal.
We also believe that it is because there is no law preventing state governments and other questionable Nigerians from registering their jets outside the shores of Nigeria that such practices are possible. We cannot continue that way. We call on the authorities to go beyond rhetoric and politics and put in place a law that will make it impossible for a state government in Nigeria to buy a plane with state money and register it in a foreign land.
We also call on the Ministry of Aviation to focus more on developing aviation industry in Nigeria instead of getting involved in politics. If the Bombardier 700 Global Express operated by the Rivers State Government had an expired clearance approval, how do we explain that it was still flying into the Nigerian airspace as the authorities want Nigerians to believe?
It is only because aviation authorities compromise and fail to do their job that such practices are possible. The Nigerian Aviation industry remains bogged down by myriad of problems and proper laws and efforts should be made instead of whipping up sentiments against one politician or the other.