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By Chinelo Obogo
Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers’ Association (NATCA) has faulted the recruitment process and poor training of air traffic controllers at the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA). The association said the worrisome development exposes Nigeria’s airspace to safety risk or compromise due to inadequate training for air traffic controllers.
Speaking at the Air Traffic Controllers (ATC)-Pilot Forum Interactive Session held at the Nigeria Civil Aviation (NCAA) Training Center in Lagos on Wednesday, the national president of NATCA, Abayomi Agoro, highlighted a critical gap between the increasing complexity of Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems and the current training provided to controllers. He said this disparity raises concerns about the ability to safely manage the growing volume of air traffic while adhering to international safety standards.
According to Agoro, to ensure the safety and efficiency of Nigeria’s airspace, NAMA urgently needs to align its recruitment strategy with its core function as an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP). He stressed that a comprehensive review of staffing across departments and directorates was crucial and that the evaluation, guided by the Civil Air Navigation Service Organization (CANSO) standards and industry best practices, will identify any discrepancies between current manpower and NAMA’s actual operational needs.
He said: “We have observed and must acknowledge that the challenge of just maintaining the already deployed ANS solutions based on the Aviation System Block Upgrade (ASBU) framework are being degraded due to scarce and constricted sources of revenue available to the Nigeria Airspace Management Authority (NAMA).
“As Air Traffic Controllers, we have serious concerns and worries about the future and resilience of our air navigation services. There are new and emerging technologies that may provide enablement for air traffic management, but they have transcended the current levels of training that ATCOs are being given and this is a critical challenge on its own. In like manner this enablement may pose both safety and security challenges to the air traffic management system if not implemented as defined in the ASBU framework and ICAO Cir 278 – National Plan for CNS/ATM Systems, due to dearth of effective financing. We must also note that the evolution of these enabling technologies will not tarry to allow us play catch ups, so we need to act and act now with determined focus.
“We have made and will continue to make our concerns known to the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, the Director General of the NCAA and the air navigation service provider as the situation has warranted, describing our concerns and suggesting appropriate action,” he said.
Agoro also condemned the Federal Government’s insistence on remittance of 50 percent of aviation agencies’ Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to the federation account. He said NAMA and the other aviation agencies are continuously handicapped to undertake implementation of critical and time-constrained programmes or projects because of the deduction of 50% at source of the IGR and appealed to the minister to intervene.
