The aviation sector in Nigeria has passed through a lot of twists and turns in the last 25 five years and some Nigerians were already beginning to give up on it. However, the current Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Management, Festus Keyamo, appears to have come to the rescue but tells ONWUKA NZESHI that his background as a lawyer and chartered arbitrator has become his magic wand on the critical assignment, he embarked upon barely a year ago
About a year ago, you assumed office as the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, a sector many felt was unfamiliar and too technical for you being a lawyer and human rights activist. How have you been coping with the challenges?
Well, I’m glad to say that after just over a year, the perception of almost everyone has changed from the general view that perhaps, a lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria cannot run the Ministry of Aviation. I think that was a bit myopic on the part of those who held such a view because running a ministry as a minister is purely a work that has to do with administration. It is more about administration than technical details. Even the technical details are things that you can also learn along the line but the job of a minister is about ninety per cent administration – how to manage men and materials. However, beyond that, most of our work here has to do with policies, legal agreements, international conventions and the Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) between Nigeria and other countries.
But you have to go through all that with a fine comb, a very strong legal mind and that is what we have done here. I’m sure you saw the results on issues like the resumption of our BASA rights with the United Kingdom when Air Peace resumed on that route despite the resistance of the UK authorities earlier. It also manifested in the negotiations that led to the resumption of the Emirates Airline back to Nigeria; the signing of the Cape Town Convention and the practice direction of the convention as well as the administrative rules regarding the possession of aircraft which shot up our global scores from 40 per cent to 75.5 per cent, the highest in Africa.
So, we have our global compliance score in aviation which officially is the highest now in Africa. All of these are pointers to the fact that in fact contrary to what people thought earlier, the Ministry of Aviation in Nigeria has been missing a legal touch for many years. At least, the highest legal touch… not just the run of the mill legal touch. I say that with all sense of modesty, but I found myself in a terrain that actually fits into what I do and what I have done for 32 or 33 years as a private legal practitioner.
I am an International Arbitrator, because apart from being a lawyer and Senior Advocate, I’m also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in the United Kingdom and most of the things we do here have to do with the skills that are required for an arbitration to take place.
At the onset, what were your key goals for the ministry?
My key goals were very clear. It took me only three weeks to come up with my key goals and they were very clear key goals. The first one was that we felt that since safety is number one in Aviation, so we put that as priority number one and that would mean making sure that the agencies responsible for safety measures especially the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), lived up to their billing.
Our first KPI (Key Performance Indicator) was to ensure strict compliance with safety regulations. The second goal was that we recognised that we needed to develop our infrastructure. So, we put the development of infrastructure to international standards, as our second KPI. Of course, the details of that can be expanded but not within the scope of a short interview like this one. What we are doing in respect of the development of infrastructure and what we plan to do are enormous. We also introduced a KPI which previous governments and administrations totally ignored but which we thought was at the heart of running the Aviation industry in Nigeria and that was to support the growth and development of our local airlines.
You can see that in Nigeria, for instance, the participation of local airlines in the Aviation ecosystem is the highest in Africa. It is actually officially the highest in Africa. Almost all airlines in Africa are owned, supported or promoted by national governments in Africa. The Rwandan Air, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, South African Airways, Egypt Air, Moroccan Air, name it. All of them are supported or promoted by the governments of these countries
It is only in Nigeria that you have 23 active, private owned commercial airlines. I mean, nobody has ever thought about that before and so why would a government come and then ignore that critical sector where you have these local players?
So, the first thing we did was to identify that we needed to come up with policies to support their growth and development while holding them to international standards. Yes, it is good to support them but we must also hold them to international standards. That is why you see that we raked up so many policies to support the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) and we did that without apologies to anybody. Some people were saying: ‘Oh, Keyamo is Keyamo of local airlines,’ and I said yes. It is better you brand me as Minister of Local Airlines than Minister of Foreign Airlines. It is better. So, I’ll do that without apologies to anybody.
That is why you saw us go to Dublin early this month. I’m sure you’ve been following our activities and saw the buzz in Dublin. I went to Dublin with all the airline operators, with the insurance operators in Nigeria, Chairmen of House and Senate Committees on Aviation and Insurance, National Insurance Commission and the five biggest banks in Nigeria.
In fact, I dragged all of them to Dublin which is the World’ Forum for Lessors. They normally hold their annual conference and Boeing officially brokered those meetings for us in Dublin. For five days running, it was tremendous and Nigeria has just opened up. Just go to them, don’t even talk to me, go and talk to the operators of our local airlines. Talk to the operators; all of them.
They have said that they have never seen something like this in 40 years. This type of support for them under this dispensation is unprecedented. I’m not giving money, but the policies have just opened up the international scene for them and they are all excited. In fact, when the cabinet reshuffle took place recently, their hearts were in their mouth. But when they retained me, they officially wrote to Mr. President thanking him for retaining this minister. I’m talking about all the airlines in Nigeria. It has never happened before. This is because before now, we had the highest rate of mortality of airlines. More than a hundred airlines have died in the last forty years.
You can name them – Concord, Virgin, Bellview, Chanchangi, Sisoliso, ADC and so on and so forth. They have all died.
What is the reason for this high rate of mortality? That is what we are addressing by the Cape Town Convention, by the new deals that we signed and by our global scores that have shot up. It is for their protection. So that is the third objective – the support for the growth and development of local airlines and we got it spot on and that is what has revolutionised the entire aviation industry now.
The fourth one of course is that we thought we should ramp up revenues because we are a revenue generating sector in Nigeria. We thought it was necessary to put that to support revenue. Take note, this was not to impose more rates and taxes but just to optimise our revenue streams.
The fifth and the last one is the training and retraining of our personnel because it is a sector that needs a lot of human capacity development. So, we have so much training that we make our people go through now. The air traffic controllers, the people in the Aviation regulatory agencies and the other technical people; all of them we send out for regular training. These are the five key areas that we identified in the sector and we are driving it with all the gusto that we can muster.
Now, with the current romance you have with the local airlines, is there still hope for a national carrier?
There’s hope. Once we see a model that fits us, a model that is acceptable to us, a model that benefits Nigeria and Nigerians, we’ll go for it.
The other one (Nigeria Air) is the court that said it’s null and void, not me. It is not even the President; it is the court that said it was illegal. So, when everybody is saying Keyamo, Keyamo stopped it, it’s not me. It’s the court that said it is fraudulent; the court not me. Once the court said you did not follow the right procedure, it was not done properly, it’s not me. It’s the court.
So, we are open to new proposals for a national carrier but it has to be something that will not overburden our national purse; something that will be beneficial especially to Nigerians. That is the model we are looking for and if we see it, we will look at it
Are you likely to look into what happened to the Air Nigeria project of the last administration?
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is looking at that already. It is not my duty. My duty is to run the sector not to probe the past. I don’t have the mandate of Mr President to probe it. Like I said earlier, the EFCC is already on it. So, what is my business with that failed project? (Laughs)
What legacies would you like to leave at the end of your tenure?
One major legacy: That I came, I saw and I introduced revolutionary policies that put the Aviation ecosystem in Nigeria on the right path of growth and that growth should continue for decades to come. Secondly, it should be remembered that for decades to come this was the turning point. The Airline Operators of Nigeria has already described me as the potential father of modern aviation in Nigeria but I have told them to wait, let me finish four years first. (Laughs)
Why do you think that we need more Aerospace Universities in Nigeria?
Not Aerospace Universities, it’s the training school. They are two. The Aerospace university is just one and that is in Abuja. But the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Zaria which trains pilots is what we are taking to other zones.
We thought that in 1964 when the school was established, it has been our pride, it has trained so many pilots. All the captains we have in Nigeria, about ninety eight percent of them, passed through that school., so it is our pride. The school has been on the path of growth and because of that, recently we had to go and buy a hotel in Zaria, precisely, Zaria Hotels, to accommodate more students because we don’t have infrastructure again within the campus. If the growth continues, we will continue to buy more land or more houses within Zaria and the government. If that is the case why continue to grow and expand within Zaria alone when other parts of this country do not have access to such training facilities. It is one country.
The same thing happened to the Nigerian Law School, Lagos. Remember, when the intakes of the Law School began to explode under Gen Sani Abacha, instead of buying more houses on Victoria Island or expanding within Lagos, the Federal Government thought that we should have campuses of the Law School too in other parts of the country.
There is no controversy over this move. We’ve put College of Aviation Training Schools in all the six geopolitical zones. It is not that we went to put in one zone and left the others. In the North East, Yola has it; South-West,
Akure; South-East, Ebonyi State has the training facility; in North Central, we have put it in Ilorin; and the South-South region has one in Osubi, Delta State. So, every part of this country should have access to such a facility to train pilots. It’s fair enough. There should be growth after nearly 60 years, a school should not be stagnant. The only thing that is constant in life is change.
