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Government demotes top FAAN officials, to review aviation agencies

By Wole Oyebade
13 June 2016   |   3:03 am
Plans by the Federal Government to restructure the aviation sector have claimed its first set of casualties, with no fewer than 30 general managers and deputy general managers of parastatals ...
Murtala Muhammed International Airport

Murtala Muhammed International Airport

Plans by the Federal Government to restructure the aviation sector have claimed its first set of casualties, with no fewer than 30 general managers and deputy general managers of parastatals in the sector demoted.

The Guardian yesterday learnt that some top hierarchy officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) were last Friday served letters of demotion, while others are to know their fate this week.

Some managers formerly placed on level 17 were in a letter issued by the Ministry of Transport demoted to level 10 and redeployed to other departments in the same organisation.

Fillers have it that all the personnel affected were beneficiaries of alleged illegal promotions and appointments of some years ago, as they have not served for the number of years required for such offices. For instance, one of the affected general managers graduated in 2010 and was placed on level 17 by a former minister of aviation on entry into the service.

The demotion exercise, according to sources, was government’s response to series of petitions alleging illegalities in employment processes and promotions during the last administration.

It would also be recalled that the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, has recently complained about the huge number of general managers in FAAN, saying he could not work with such a larger number, with attendant wage bill of N800 million a month.

It was also gathered that plans were already on to reduce the 11 directorates in FAAN to six, with similar plan for the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

The restructuring would return FAAN, NAMA and NCAA back to the status quo of fewer directorate they had some six years ago, with mass sack of “unqualified workers.”

It would be recalled that a former minister of aviation some years ago expanded the directorates in FAAN from six to 10. The six were Directorates of Administration, Commercial, Finance, Engineering Operations and Security.

After the expansion, Directorate of Legal Service, which was a department under the Managing Director’s office, emerged, alongside Directorates of Cargo, Projects and Human Resources.

The new exercise would see Directorates of Human Resources and Administration come together as it was before; Directorate of Project would go back to Engineering Directorate and Cargo Directorate would revert to Directorate of Commercial.

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