Owolabi faults composition of national carrier ministerial committee

President Muhammadu Buhari recently directed the Ministry of Aviation to constitute a committee to look into how his government can revisit the issue of refloating a national carrier for the country after 12 years the defunct Nigeria Airways was rested. The committee has the managing director of Discovery Airlines, Captain Mohammed Abdulsalam, as chairman.

But the composition of the committee is raising so many objections and criticisms by critical stakeholders in the aviation industry. In this interview with IBE UWALEKE, the managing director and chief executive officer of Skypower Aviation Handling Company Limited (SAHCOL), Dr. Olu Owolabi, one of the critics of the committee’s composition, explained while he is opposed to the membership of the panel and talked about other issues that challenge the industry. Excerpts:

A RECENT report named one of Arik’s staff and that of a catering company in a drug trafficking scandal. How would you have reacted if they were your staff?
Ans: I would have felt so bad.

How would it have affected the operations of your company vis-a-vis public perception and patronage?
Ans: No doubt it will affect it negatively. But you know in any company you will find the odd man out. Out of 12 Disciples you must get one Judas. The airline must have done its best to make sure there was no security lapse, but it happened. So, no matter all the efforts to stop things like that from happening, you will see one Judas will want to spoil the reputation a company has built over the years.

For us here, we make sure such thing does not happen because we diligently carry out our checks. We ensure our staff pass security test screening before allowing them to work in sensitive areas of our company.

How do you rate your management’s relationship with your workers in terms of welfare, in order to prevent such serious scandal from happening in your company?
Ans: A good relationship between the management and workers of any company, will not stop bad behavior of a bad staff. Are you saying that there is no good relationship between Arik’s management and its staff? No, there is. It is just that someone has made up his mind to make quick money. That staff wanted to get rich overnight at the expense of the company that is paying him monthly salary. That is not good at all.

Will you tell me because I am not paying you salary or because you do not like your job, you now have to pick a gun and shoot yourself. Some of them who resort to such means (carrying drugs), are being caught outside our shores and are either killed or jailed for life. Certainly, drug trafficking is not a better way to make good money.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently constituted a committee to revisit the issue of refloating the national carrier. Do you agree with this move?
Yes, I agree. Being an insider before with the Nigeria Airways, I support it. But the steps taken so far I am against them. I am against the composition of the committee. You cannot ask somebody with divided interest to head a committee of that magnitude. There are some members of the committee that have no aviation background that should not be there, and there are others that I quite respect.

Those who worked with the collapsed Nigeria Airways, ought to be members of that committee, so that they can shade light on the cause of the collapse of the first national carrier and chart the way forward in order to prevent the mistakes that killed the airline. No one can scratch a man’s back in his absence. So, I see this as one step backwards.

Does it mean that you will not accept any recommendation they will make to the President?
I will query any recommendation the committee makes because it was not properly constituted. We must do things right in this country. Again, refloating the national carrier was one of the campaign promises that the President made. Therefore, the President meant well by constituting a committee to actualize that promise, but picked people on wrong advice who have no business being in the committee. The members of the committee are eminent personalities in their own right.

But what I am saying is that they are not on the ground, they don’t know what happened with the Nigeria Airways and so they cannot proffer solutions on how to revive it.
For me, government should not get involved in the new national carrier. It should allow the private operators to manage the carrier so that it can be viable as a business concern.

Sahcol used to be a government property under the defunct Nigeria Airways. But when it was privatized and the new owner bought it, he started investing in it to nurture it to grow. Today you can see that the company has become a success story that every body talks about.
Do I take it that you will be recommending for a review committee that will examine the report of the national carrier committee?
Sure. By the time the committee finishes its sitting and releases its report you will see a lot of criticisms. I am aware that the

committee requested for input from the public. But who are you giving the input to? A committee that was improperly constituted.
Did you send any one?
To those who were not at the Nigeria Airways! No. No one asked me for any input. But I am putting my own through this interview. Refloating a new national carrier is a good idea. It will restore our national pride and accord us respect on the international scene. We have lost a lot since our national carrier was rested. All the benefits that supposed to accrue to us from IATA (International Air Transport Association) we are not getting them. Also, we are losing out in BASA, (Bilateral Air Service Agreement) because we do not have a national carrier, thereby allowing other countries to take undue advantage over Nigeria.