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•Says regulator operating under severe financial strain
The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), NCAA branch, has warned that a bill before the National Assembly seeking to change how the five percent Ticket Sales Charge is shared among regulatory agencies could jeopardise air safety, insisting that the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is already operating under severe financial pressure.
In a statement signed by its NCAA branch Chairman, Diepreye Saburugha and Secretary, Celestine Nkemakolam Chukwu, the association addressed the bill seeking to reduce the NCAA’s share of the five percent Ticket Sales Charge from 56 percent to 40 percent, while increasing the share of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency from 22 percent to 40 percent.
NAAPE detailed the extent of NCAA’s current financial difficulties, stressing that this was not a matter of speculation but a reality well known throughout the industry. It said: “What makes the current proposal especially troubling is that the NCAA is already operating under severe financial pressure. This is not speculation. It is a reality that is well known throughout the aviation industry. The Authority is increasingly finding it difficult to adequately fund critical safety oversight activities. Important inspections and surveillance programmes have become constrained by limited resources. Inspectors are owed substantial Duty Tour Allowances arising from official oversight assignments. Various staff allowances have been reduced or discontinued, while months of legitimate entitlements remain outstanding because available funds are no longer sufficient to meet both operational requirements and personnel obligations.
“The depth of this financial crisis becomes even clearer when one considers the Authority’s human capital. In the last five years alone, the NCAA has lost more than sixty inspectors and other highly specialised technical personnel through attrition, largely because of poor remuneration and more attractive opportunities elsewhere. Over many years, the Authority invested enormous public resources in training these professionals locally and internationally, only to lose them to foreign civil aviation authorities, airlines, maintenance organisations, aircraft manufacturers and consulting firms offering significantly better conditions of service. This continuing brain drain represents a serious erosion of institutional knowledge and technical capacity for a regulator whose effectiveness depends almost entirely on the competence and experience of its technical workforce.”
According to NAAPE, the NCAA had tried to address the retention crisis, but funding constraints have stalled even an already-approved fix. “Recognising the urgent need to improve the remuneration and retention of its inspectors, the NCAA undertook a comprehensive review of its Conditions of Service and submitted the proposals to the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission for approval. Even though many stakeholders already considered the proposed improvements modest and insufficient to bridge the widening remuneration gap, the Commission further reduced the proposals before granting approval. Yet, despite securing that approval as far back as January 2026, the Authority has still been unable to implement the revised Conditions of Service because of inadequate funding. Few examples better illustrate the depth of NCAA’s present financial difficulties than a regulator that cannot implement an already approved remuneration structure for the very professionals responsible for protecting the lives of millions of Nigerians,” it said.
The statement further explained how existing revenue-sharing arrangements deepen the shortfall. “The situation is further aggravated by the automatic deduction of approximately thirty per cent of NCAA’s internally generated revenue at source. The implications are profound. Even where operators pay statutory fees specifically intended to cover the cost of regulatory inspections, including air tickets, hotel accommodation, transportation, feeding and other logistics required for inspectors to perform official oversight activities, those funds are still subjected to the same deductions before they reach the Authority. Consequently, monies that should have fully funded regulatory inspections are immediately reduced, leaving the NCAA to source additional funds from its already overstretched budget merely to carry out statutory functions.
“The situation has deteriorated to the point where inspectors sometimes finance official inspections from their personal resources with the expectation of subsequent reimbursement. In many cases, those reimbursements remain outstanding for months or even years, creating a growing backlog of debts owed to inspectors. Unsurprisingly, many inspectors have become reluctant to embark on further oversight assignments while allowances for previously completed statutory duties remain unpaid. No effective safety oversight system can be sustained when regulatory inspections depend on the personal financial sacrifices of inspectors rather than institutional funding,” the association said.
The association noted that the NCAA itself has raised concerns about the sustainability of its own funding arrangements. “The financial pressure has become so severe that the NCAA itself has publicly expressed concern over the sustainability of its funding arrangements and questioned the continued deduction of revenues required for the discharge of its statutory responsibilities. Yet, at precisely the time when the government should be exploring ways to strengthen the Authority’s financial autonomy, improve inspector welfare, clear outstanding obligations and reinforce technical capacity, a proposal has emerged to reduce one of its principal statutory sources of funding even further. That is difficult to justify,” it said.
