NIGERIA Aviation sector has witnessed numerous incidents that claimed the lives of so many air passengers in recent years, the cause of which is yet to be made public, although some of them were unofficially attributed to human errors. Understandably, air traffic controllers are no longer taking anything for granted, as they are ready to raise the alarm over any situation they consider not in line with safety tradition.

Recently, the air traffic workers, under the aegis of Nigeria Air Traffic Controllers’ Association (NATCA) cried out over the deteriorating state of some of the communication equipment at the nation’s airports.

The group stated that most times, the poor quality of these gadgets, especially the radio, makes pilot-controller communication very difficult, when landing or taking off.

Consequently, NATCA has appealed to the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi and President Muhammed Buhari to take urgent step to replace these gadgets, so as to prevent future air accidents in the country

Speaking with The Guardian on the matter, President of NATCA, Victor Eyaru, said: “As we have been saying before and will keep on saying, our radios are not the best you can get any where in the world. As I am talking to you now, my colleagues working at the Radar at the airport are complaining of having problem communicating well with pilots.”

According to him, although the gadgets are still working, it is difficult to communicate with pilots, because of old age.

“We are not saying there is no communication at all, but it is with difficulty. The airlines too have radio and they do not have such problem. And this is not the issue of the waves. Perhaps we do not have competent engineers. I don’t know. There are times a pilot will not hear you or you will not hear the pilot. This problem is a recurring one, and it has been like that for a long time.

“We have sent our observations to the management of Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA). We have written to the management times without number, but to no avail. We have issued communiqué after each of our AGM. We have asked the management to replace the radio communication equipment because if anything happens, they will start passing the blame to each other. So, it is better we do the right thing at the right time.

“The problem has been there for long, as subsequent management has tried to work on it, but the thing kept on deteriorating. Even we have written to this present minister to congratulate him and also recommended some issues for quick fix in NAMA for the purpose of effectiveness,” he explained.

He said if the problem persists, there could be a situation where an airport that has Radar would not be able to communicate with an approaching aircraft.

“The situation is so bad that when other pilots are flying over our air space, they usually tell us that in the whole world, Nigeria’s radio is the worst they have ever seen. And it is not that we don’t have the money; the money is there to get any kind of equipment we want.”

The Special Adviser to the Managing Director on operations, NAMA, Bola Ahmed agreed with the workers that the communication facilities at the Lagos airport are old and obsolete and that they could still be in good shape with regular maintenance.

“To say some facilities are obsolete may not be too far from the truth. They may be old, but not unserviceable. Government, through NAMA, has awarded contract for a total rebuilding of the communication infrastructure. After his appointment, the new minister came around to check the state of things, and the communication facility was one of the things he inspected. In the aviation industry, quite unlike the automobile, if you strictly adhere to the maintenance schedule, the equipment may be old, but they would still remain serviceable.

And that is why you hear that an aircraft is 16 to 17 years old and is still in use. It is the same thing with infrastructure. The communication infrastructure is like an old woman, it gets to a stage you can no longer flog her. It gets to a stage and gives you servicing notice, but the Federal Government is mindful of it, and has put in place a new communication infrastructure, and in the next two to three months, it will come online. But as a stopgap, we have a fantastic system on ground. About two to three weeks ago, we had problem with 127.3 MHZ, our crop of engineers were able to recover it and make the reach farther.”

According to him, an air controller in Lagos can now monitor an aircraft up to Nigeria-Cameroon border before handing over.

“Equipment must be maintained. Some must be maintained every year. The same thing with aircraft, we have different maintenance schedules, and you must observe them,” he said.

On whether the fears expressed by the workers were genuine or not, he said though there would have been some elements of politics in the union’s action, but in the aviation industry, safety should not be toyed with. And any administrator worth his salt wouldn’t keep quiet about it.

“If you come to the training school, where we do flying and air traffic control, in the simulator, at a point it becomes real, because they will tell you the number of people you have killed. If that were to be a real life situation, you may not sleep, when in actual fact you have not killed anybody,” he said.