Federal Government has been urged to strengthen the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) through improved funding, greater autonomy and infrastructure renewal, rather than pursuing privatisation of the country’s air navigation services.

The National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE) made the call yesterday amid renewed debate over the future and management of vital aviation agencies.

A statement jointly signed by the President and General Secretary, NAAE, Selzing Miri and Muhammadu Shuaibi respectively, said Nigeria’s airspace remained a strategic national asset that must continue to be controlled by the government.

NAAE insisted the challenges facing NAMA were not as a result of inefficiency, but due largely to years of underinvestment, inadequate reinvestment of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), delayed funding for important projects and rising operational costs.

NAAE said the increasing demand on Nigeria’s airspace, coupled with the high cost of maintaining sophisticated Communication, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) systems in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs), required urgent government intervention.

The association declared that rather than weakening NAMA through privatisation, the government should implement reforms aimed at strengthening the agency’s institutional capacity, operational efficiency and financial sustainability.

The engineers registered their opposition just as the former Managing Director of NAMA, Mr Roland Iyayi, faulted the five per cent Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) collected from passengers by airlines on behalf of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), saying it is unsustainable for domestic carriers.

TSC is a statutory levy collected on every airline ticket sold in Nigeria.

Iyayi, currently a trustee of the Airline Operators of Nigeria, AON, also urged the Federal Government to overhaul the existing TSC structure and channel the proceeds into a dedicated infrastructure fund to accelerate the development of Nigeria’s aviation sector.

He said the country’s aviation industry lacked the profit and market maturity required to support an ad valorem system of charges, adding that airlines were struggling to cope with the current arrangement.

He described the five per cent TSC as a sham that had long defeated the purpose for which it was introduced, which was to develop aviation infrastructure, and proposed replacing it with an Aviation Development Fund that would be insulated from government revenue accounts and dedicated to infrastructure projects within the sector.