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Chinelo Obogo
A former commandant of the Murtala Muhammed Airport and chairman of Centurion Aviation Security and Safety Consult, Group Captain John Ojikutu, has said the Federal Government should audit the finances of agencies, domestic airlines, fuel marketers and other aviation stakeholders in order to recover funds and reposition the economy.
Speaking to Daily Sun how past policies have failed to provide succour for the economy and what the government should be doing differently, the aviation expert said the government must start with auditing the ‘manipulations’ of earnings accrued to it from private enterprises and agencies.
He alleged that about N20 billion is lost or not accounted for by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) annually from the charges of five percent on passengers tickets sales, cargo freight charges, and chartered flight fares charges. He also said the national financial intelligence agencies must find out the connections between private enterprises and the banks.
“Government must start with auditing the manipulations of earnings accrued to it from private enterprises such as the Banks, Fuel Marketers, Power Discos and Private Airline Operators.
“The national financial fraud intelligence agencies must find out the connections between these private enterprises and the banks; that is the beginning of the solutions. Some of the revelations from probes and court proceedings in some of the enterprises including airlines and Discos show clearly that the banks can not be absolved of the problems in the economy.
“Second, the returns of over N8 billion annually by JAMB alone should tell any discerning mind that government could be losing hundreds of billions of naira annually from the over 500 MDAs.
“I have said it several times that about N20 billion is lost or not accounted for by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) annually from the charges of five percent on passengers tickets sales, cargo freight charges, and chartered flight fares changes.
“Why did the NCAA not give the traffic statistics for 2018? Go into its records; NCAA has not recorded less than two million outbound international passengers in any year between 2015 to 2017. Now imagine each of the intercontinental passengers including first and business classes passengers paying about N300,000, the earnings can not be less than N600bn for international passengers alone still not considering the earnings on domestic passengers, cargo freight charges and chartered flights.
“The five percent charges on the international passengers tickets of N600bn can not be less than N30bn. Go check from the NCAA earnings record if it ever got up to N20bn as the five percent TSC in any year. This is a simple arithmetic for a primary six student to discern.”
