NCAA to recover over N22bn debt owed by airlines

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has disclosed that the debt profile of indigenous and foreign airlines to the agency has piled up to the tune of N19 billion, and $7 million respectively.

But while it attributed accumulation of the said debts to the scourge of Covid-19 pandemic that hit hard on the travel industry, the Authority said it was mapping out strategies to reconcile the debts with the airlines.

Speaking during an oversight visit to the agency by the House of Representatives Committee on Aviation, the Director-general, NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu, said the Authority has reached a compromise with airline operators to ensure that all debts owed the agency are reconciled and payment plan agreed on that would be favourable to all concerned.

On the heels of this debt reconciliatory arrangement, Nuhu said the Authority would step up its services between now and 2024 by training its workforce across the country.

Captain Nuhu, who mentioned some of the immediate needs of the NCAA, said the regulator understands the difficulty brought by the pandemic and will institute a payment plan that will be favourable to both the agency and operators.

He also harped on the need to develop regional offices to reduce the cumbersome nature of regulations and ensure it gets to the operators.

“We are empowering five regional offices to ensure the job in smaller areas get done, and they do not have to refer to Lagos or Abuja. It brings regulation closer to the operators outside Lagos and Abuja opening more regional offices in the far reaches of the country.

“Already, Port Harcourt takes care of the South-East and South-South but we are looking at opening a regional office in Enugu for the South East. We are looking at another one in either Maiduguri or Yola for the North East, Ilorin for the middle-belt, and Uyo or Calabar for the South-South.

The Director-general also explained that training for the inspectors and other regulatory staff is highly important to the agency and that the NCAA was competing for manpower, especially pilots and engineers with airlines that pay better.

Captain Nuhu added that these inspectors with the CAA needed more training to be better with current trends in the industry and that the only way to retain these pilots and engineers was to make their remuneration nearly at par with the airlines to keep them.

Reacting, the Chairman House Committee on Aviation, Honourable  Nnaji Nnolim, said the House was on its oversight function and would look at what the NCAA has done and intends to do with what has been allocated and would be allocated to them.

He also commended the NCAA for a job well done especially during the peak of the pandemic and how the regulatory agency handled it.