When a former aviation minister, Stella Oduah, bought two bulletproof BMW cars for the humongous amount of N255m (then about $1.6m; now over $2m), we all cried foul in the press. It was not the humongous amount alone that jarred our sensibilities. Equally provocative was the revelation that the price was inflated about 100 per cent over the standard price of N64 million per car. Even at the standard price, the purchase would still have been outrageous, when the high poverty rate in the country is factored in. What moral compass was guiding Oduah when she decided to ride in such a car in a country where over 70 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a day?
Recent developments have now revealed that Oduahgate, as the outrageous car purchase came to be known, was a clear symptom of the corruption in the aviation sector under her. We now know that she sat over a budget of over N400bn (please, note the “b” in the amount) over four years. That’s not all. The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria also took a loan of at least $500m from China for airport projects. Such a loan would have been unnecessary if FAAN could accurately account for the over $2bn a year it received from passenger surcharge and other fees, including the $60 surcharge or so derived from the ticket of every international traveller. The passenger ticket surcharge alone brings in over $1.8bn annually, since no fewer than three million passengers pass through the nation’s international airports every year.
The rankings were made by a travel website, Guide to Sleeping in Airports, and based on the reactions of 26,297 respondents to a survey, which asked them to judge facilities in four categories, namely, comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service. In the case of PHC, respondents persistently complained about (1) unpleasant and unhelpful staff, (2) corruption, (3) a severe lack of seating, (4) broken air-conditioning system and (5) the fact that the arrival hall was inside a tent. All these factors apply in varying degrees to all three Nigerian airports in the top 10 worst category.
Most editorials on the poor rankings of Nigerian international airports have focused on infrastructural development. However, when the factors responsible for the poor rankings are examined critically, it is discovered that the behaviour of airport workers and widespread corruption top the list of the respondents’ negative assessments. Corruption is not strange to international travellers; but they are particularly sensitive to airport workers’ behaviour, because they often need information or assistance as quickly as possible, often because of time and cultural constraints.
Unfortunately, however, far too many Nigerian workers are generally rude, unpleasant, unhelpful, and uncooperative, especially in gate-keeping situations, such as airports, checkpoints, admission offices in the universities, entrance gates to event venues, and similar situations, where clients earnestly ask for information or assistance. You hear “Please”, “Oga”, “Daddy”, and “Thank you” from them mainly when bribery or tips are involved in the transaction with them.
The truth is that the vast majority of Nigerian workers in gate-keeping situations lack the knowledge, courtesy, and culture of customer service, with some of them treating clients as if they are asking for a favour. Clearly, capacity building in this regard is an urgent task that must be accomplished, especially by educational and government institutions, corporations, retailers, telephone companies, and other service providers. It is particularly urgent to all categories of workers at the nation’s international and domestic airports, where clients need information and necessary assistance in a hurry.
Just as rodents, cockroaches, and other household pests thrive in dirty and crowded environments, so does corruption thrive in societies which provide the economic, political, legal, and cultural contexts for the practice. Corruption grows, when it is condoned, just as cockroaches multiply, if uncontrolled. However, unlike cockroaches which can be killed off with insecticides, endemic corruption will take decades to minimise to a reasonable level. It requires as much as strong institutions as it does changes in cultural and attitudinal practices. The necessary processes for such changes should be integrated with capacity building projects from the primary school grades to the highest levels in government’s decision corporations.
To be fair, there are indications of infrastructural improvements around the five international airports. I passed through the MMIA this past weekend, and noticed improvements here and there, most of them more cosmetic than substantive. The problem really is that work has been going on at these airports for ever, without appreciable improvements in needed areas, such as power supply and seating areas. In many cases, roads are diverted without warning while services are disrupted without some courteous notice or apology to passengers. Passengers’ comfort is clearly not a priority in the remodelling project.
It is not the case that Sleeping in Airports, as the website guide is popularly called, does not recognise the ongoing remodelling in and around Nigeria’s airports. For example, it observed in the case of the Port Harcourt airport that “The good news is that some areas of the terminal have been recently renovated, meaning you can expect actual walls, floors and windows …Though it is a far cry from reasonable, improvements are being made.”
Remodelling and new constructions are necessary to keep airports up-to-date, and they go on all the time at various airports around the world, including the very busy, and yet excellent, ones in Atlanta, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, and Dubai. The problem with Nigerian airports is that such projects never get completed on time, if at all, because the funds allocated to them never make it to the contractors’ accounts or they only go in and back out to government officials and politicians. Oduah’s car purchase at a highly inflated price may have been an example.
Not only are projects abandoned due to corruption, the maintenance of existing structures suffers the same fate. If existing facilities at Nigerian international airports were well-maintained, they would not be as dilapidated as they are today, with elevators and escalators dying with power generators, which are never serviced as required.
The rot in the nation’s aviation sector must be seen as symptomatic of the rot in other sectors of national life. Last Saturday, on my way from Akure in Ondo State to the MMIA in Lagos, I spent a good eight hours on a trip, which normally should have taken about three hours on good roads. Worse still, I encountered at least six automobile accidents, one of them fresh with multiple fatalities. Road deaths in Nigeria are symptomatic of other unnecessary deaths, especially in the hospitals, where needed facilities to save lives are unavailable, and of equipment and public facilities, which are never maintained. The death of knowledge in the educational institutions is an extension of the same fate.
PUNCH
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