The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika has made his maiden press briefing, saying the master plan for the development of the aviation sector has been estimated to worth at least one per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020.
Sirika, who was silent on the botched launch of national carrier, Nigeria Air towards the end of President Buhari’s first term when he served as Minister of State for Aviation however said efforts were in top gear to ensure that the industry is maximised to full potential.
Sirika had in 2016 come up with a controversial aviation road map, which seemed to have been drawn without recourse to industry stakeholders. The roadmap has as its main components: a new national carrier, concession of airports, Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO), and aircraft leasing programme.
Giving further insights to the roadmap without any mention of Nigeria Air, Sirika noted that “We also need airlines to feed into the airports – a robust airline that is efficient. Mark the work efficient. Secondly, you need a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) centre – to maintain those aircraft when they come in or go out. You cannot come here and have a landing gear issue and wait for some people to come from Germany to fix it.”
“The third is the need for aerospace– to go into research and development for the future. We cannot continue to be consumers,” he said.
While recalling that Nigeria started with Brazil, he decried why Brazil gapped Nigeria in the sector development by currently being manufacturer of airplanes today.
He added that “We also started long time before many of these countries. China just started aviation few years ago, China has started manufacturing aircraft. We can do it. We can do so many things in aviation. Dubai started over ten years ago, and today they are producing parts of airplanes. If you had flown a B787, you would have flown some component parts produced in Dubai.
However, to move forward, the Minister disclosed that “We need an aviation leasing company, where we can access cheap funds at one digit that you can invest in aviation businesses to grow them. The challenge is finance, so, we think we should establish a leasing company that can handle that. Then, we have our training institution with manpower development.
