Last week, the Minister of state for transportation (aviation), Hadi Sirika, received from the chairman committee, a Reviewed and Amendment of Civil Aviation Act 2016. While Sirika may not be the proponent of the revised Act, the unnecessary euphoria and celebration attached to it does make no sense. Nothing is wrong with the 2006 Civil Aviation Act, implementation has always been the outstanding issue.
Therefore, a new Civil Aviation Act is of little consequence to how we practice and promote the aviation sector. If there is need to change the Act, stakeholders must be invited to deliberate on it before forwarding it to the National Assembly for verification, vetting and approval. The process also requires numerous public hearings.
From 1999 to date the aviation sector in Nigeria has witnessed about 12 ministers. This high turnover of politicians has definitely led to serial policy somersaults as the majority of the new appointees discard existing policies to enact new ones that would, most times, support their personal interest.
When Stella Oduah became aviation minister in 2011, her immediate interest, fueled by greed, was to amend the 2006 Civil Aviation Act to diminish and transfer the functions of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to the ministry. The Director General of the NCAA at the time, Dr Harold Demuren, was removed to pave way for her and her team to orchestrate the highest level of fraud ever perpetrated in the sector.
When Oduah realised the complicated process to change an Act of Parliament, she resulted to promulgation of policies. In the name of generating more revenues for aviation sector, she sought and got approval from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to introduce arbitrary charges for schedule and non-schedule aircraft operators in the country. Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) with various countries were revised and processed according to her wish. Foreign airlines, who could dance to her illicit demand, were given more landing destinations in Nigeria. Income from BASA became her personal assets.
The minister went further to increase landing and navigation charges for domestic, non-schedule aircraft operators. She gave stern directives to the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and The Federal Airports Authority (FAAN) to remit certain portion of their revenues to a designated account.
Ms. Oduah destroyed the cohesive fabric and orderly pattern of the system to allow her loot with impunity. And she did it very well. Aviation masterplan, another corrupt policy she narrowly introduced before her disgraceful exit, would have virtually sold the sector to her proxies.
This is a single example of how aviation ministers, especially very greed ones get bloated with the idea of introducing policies upon policies in the name of steering the sector in the right direction.
There are tonnes of policies already in place for any minister of aviation to review and implement, if stakeholders are in agreement. But no, a newly appointed aviation minister must introduce his own, to rhyme with his aspirations, most times, clouded with intense greed.
Two factors are responsible for these unusual exercises in Nigeria’s aviation sector: (1) personal interests of newly appointed head of the sector, and (2) half-baked aviation experts who are always available to get close to the new appointee; mislead him or her for personal gain.
Again, there are calls for revision of the existing policies by the new minster of state aviation, Hadi Sirika. I do not understand the need to revise or introduce new guidelines to the current Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs) or the 2006 Civil Aviation Act. Nigeria is in tune with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and once a new amendment is made to the existing rules and regulations to meet international best practice, it becomes necessary for the NCAA to adjust its regulations without ministerial induction. But a situation whereby the order to change policies is mandated by a minister, simply to show his or her presence in the sector, is senseless. It is therefore an abuse of power. The NCAA should make and amend rules to govern and regulate civil aviation in Nigeria, not politicians.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 was an act of Congress that created the Federal Aviation Agency (later the Federal Aviation Administration or the FAA) and abolished its predecessor, the Civil Aeronautics Administration. The act empowered the FAA to oversee and regulate safety in the airline industry and the use of American airspace by both civilian aircraft and military aircraft. The Act has just one amendment since its inception in 1958, which is the incorporation of the FAA’s functions.
The FAA has three primary functions today, and a fourth that is its interrelationship with the National Transportation Safety Board. The three primary functions are:
- Making of rules to govern and regulate civil aviation
- Making of long-term policy toward not only the governance of aviation but also the fostering of it.
- Enforcement of the rules that it makes.
It comes as no surprise to anyone that the primary function of the FAA is to regulate civil aviation. In so doing, it proposes, promulgates, and enforces certain titles of the Code of Federal Regulations that are referred to in the aviation industry as the Federal Aviation Regulations.
The law requires that when the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) is issued, the administrative agency must allow a particular period of time for comment upon that rule, unless certain emergency conditions exist. Therefore, when the FAA want to either originate a new regulation or change an existing one, it issues the NPRM and allows the industry a reasonable period of time in which to comment. Quite often, the comment period appears short, and various industry sources petition the FAA to extend that comment period, which is frequently accomplished.
After the comment period closes, the agency is then supposed to consider the comments of the public and those to be affected by the rules proposed, and deliberate and consider the same in its process of rulemaking. Quite frequently, a large outpouring of comment does in fact influence the FAA. Several proposed rules over the past few years have been abandoned or significantly modified after the consideration of public comments. When this process has run its course, the agency then issues its Final Notice of Rule Making, which sets forth the rule as it will be adopted, and gives an effective date for it.
There is absolutely no doubt that public comment is a most important stage of the rule-making process and is, frankly, the only one in which the average person to be affected by the rule has any real voice.
A great part of the mandate given the FAA by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, as amended, is to foster and support the growth and use of civil aviation in the United States. Unquestionably, the FAA’s rule-making activities speak as evidence of current administration policy toward civil aviation.
But there are other ways in which the FAA makes policy. Particularly in the last decade or so, the administrator of the FAA has become a more visible public official, more outspoken in approaching things, and more available to the industry and the media to pronounce those feelings that inevitably reflect the policy of the FAA.
The FAA’s enforcement of its own regulations begins with the various inspectors who are stationed in the field, in the various flight standards district offices across the nation. There are inspectors who are designated to deal with operations issues, maintenance issues, airworthiness issues, and avionics issues.
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