DEVELOPMENT OF ANS IN NIGERIA
By NATCA

Gentlemen of the Press,

I welcome you on behalf of my colleagues on the Executive Council of the Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers' Association (NATCA) and the entirety of our membership to this press conference.

CONDOLENCE
We hasten to express our heartfelt condolence to the families who lost their loved ones in the ill-fated Bellview aircraft that crashed on the night of 22 October 2005 and the management of Bellview Airline for the loss and dent to their impeccable safety record. Our hearts also go out to our indefatigable President and Commander-in-Chief on the untimely death of his beloved wife, Stella. We pray God to give him the strength to bear the irreparable loss.

Sad as the event was, it nonetheless posed the greatest challenge to sundry aviation practitioners, stakeholders, members of the public and the Nigerian state to assure the safety and efficiency of the air transport system in the country. It is undoubtedly a wake-up call for all the professionals in the aviation industry and other stakeholders to exhibit the highest sense of responsibility and strict adherence to the prescribed Standards and Recommended Practices sanctioned by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). We passionately identify and sympathize with all our countrymen in this period of national grief and understandable outrage.

NATCA - AN INTRODUCTION
NATCA was established 32 years ago with the principal objective of advancing the cause of air navigation safety, efficiency and reliability in Nigeria and to federate with other like-minded organizations elsewhere to promote same all over the world.

We are a non-profit making professional association that is non-partisan and non-industrial which is made up of licensed air traffic controllers that are practicing, retired or engaged in teaching the discipline in reputable aviation institutions. Other categories of our membership include student air traffic officers (ATCOs), corporate and associate members. Our members could be found in all airports belonging to organizations such as the NAMA, NCAA, NCAT, airforce and a few private organizations.

The principal objectives for which NATCA was established include:

• Providing a professional forum for those engaged in air navigation service and other concerned aviation - related disciplines to continuously discuss, examine, evaluate and assess the state of air navigation and air traffic management system from time to time.
• Proffering periodic advice and information on the desired applicable practices, procedures, equipment and facilities provided for the safety and efficiency of the air navigation service in the country.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANS IN NIGERIA
At the onset of the development of the aviation industry in the 1950s and immediately after Nigeria's independence in 1960, the emphasis of the Government had been the development of airlines and airports. Colossal amounts of funds were expended in developing the now liquidated national carrier, the Nigeria Airways, the "flying elephant".

It was equally true that financial provisions were made for the construction of modern airports across the country in the last 2 and half decades by both Federal and State Governments whether these were viable or not.

After the initial equipage of the air navigation service under the defunct Civil Aviation Department (CAD) of the Ministry of Aviation (MOA), the sector was allowed to suffer all sorts of inadequacies and unserviceability which was perhaps due to the lack of awareness of successive Nigerian leaderships on the importance of the sector to the national development and security of the country.

This lack of attention led to the decline of the sector and the concretization of serious operational deficiencies and other limitations. These deficiencies included: Inadequate navigational and landing aids and where they existed operated erratically and unreliably, poor communication coverage largely based on HF, radar service was on and off and later completely ceased, Nigerian airspace was structured such that most portions of it was advisory as positive services were nor available, lack of airways, low staffing levels, lack of adequate training and recurrency, maintenance was poor or even non existent, poor working environment, poor working conditions, etc.

INITIATIVES TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS ON ANS IN THE PAST

In order to address these problems and in response to the agitation of professional groups in the industry, Government established FCAA in 1989. It was saddled with the responsibility of providing safe, efficient and economic air navigation in the country, among other regulatory functions. Afterwards some progress was recorded in developing the framework for the amelioration of the problems and deficiencies highlighted above.

However, this experiment was not allowed to mature and subsequently became a victim of the Nigerian penchant for policy instability and change for its own sake. FCAA was therefore merged with FAAN in a misguided reform that took the aviation back to the past era of inefficiency, redtapism and neglect.

This anomaly was happily corrected in May 1999 when the last military administration in its last days decreed into existence the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) with NATCA at the forefront in championing this change. This was largely in line with what is obtainable in most advanced climes and also accords with the ICAO position that in order to enthrone and efficient aviation system devoid of sectoral imbalances and undue concentration in some aspects at the detriment of others, service providers should be separated from regulatory agencies.

A FRESH ATTEMPT WITH NAMA

The establishment of NAMA and NCAA was therefore the consummation of the yearnings of some professional and technical cadres in the industry or more specifically in the case of NAMA - in the air navigation sub-sector. It is a fact, which is however not well known by stakeholders and the general public, that in the evolution of aviation in Nigeria, other sub-sectors were obviously given more attention to the detriment of the air navigation sub-sector.

In its commendable resolve to address these decades of neglect the Federal Government with the establishment of NAMA sent a clear and unequivocal message to the global aviation community that Nigeria was set to pay due attention to the development of air navigation service. For the first time, in the country's history an organization exists to exclusively solve the problems identified as militating against the establishment of a safe, secure and efficient airspace.

ANS: AN ASSESSMENT

The current organizational arrangement has clearly facilitated the recording of some landmark achievements in general airspace re-engineering. Nigeria has been able to achieve within a period of five years what had proved insurmountable prior to the establishment of NAMA. Time will not actually allow the enumeration of the many measures that they were implemented in order to enhance the safety and efficiency of the national airspace. Some of these feats include:

• Massive installation of navigational and landing aids unprecedented in the experience of the country involving virtually all the airports in the country was successfully executed. The installation has been concluded in most of these airports while some are ongoing. In the same vein these navigational facilities are now regularly calibrated in order to ensure that they operate accurately in accordance with laid down ICAO limits.
• Enhanced communication coverage of the vast national airspace following the procurement and installation of new and modern digital communication equipment as well as upgrade of the existing data communication facilities. VHF coverage of more than 80% has been achieved in the country while data transmission rates have been doubled and in some cases, tripled.
• Restructuring of the national airspace with the abolishing of the erstwhile upper terminal control areas in Lagos, Kano and Maiduguri as well as the advisory routes and airspaces that were dominant in the Nigerian airspace in the past. Currently, air traffic is channeled across the country through a robust network of airways established since 2001 and are constantly being reviewed, adjusted and evaluated for optimal efficiency without compromising ate safety.
• The establishment of two ACCs in Kano (2001) and Lagos (2002) which had been on the drawing board of successive regimes for decades without any hope of implementation. This remarkable feat, which was achieved by Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers without foreign assistance, has made it possible for positive air traffic services to be provided in most portions of our national airspace thereby enhancing air safety and economic operations.
• In the late 70s radar facilities were installed in six airports in the country as follows: Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja. These radar stations however never operated for any reasonably long period of time on a continuous basis as a result of some technical deficiencies and poor supply of spares essential for the regular and timely maintenance of the stations. Consequently, these erratic facilities broke down one after the other resulting at a time to the non-provision of radar services in the entire airspace. It was however with the establishment of NAMA that the radars in Lagos and Abuja were resuscitated and put to use in the effective control and management of these busy airports three years ago.
• These radars have since then remained steadily operational while a new radar project which seeks to provide total radar coverage for the whole country has since commenced. Infact, it is expected that the Lagos radar will be commissioned by March/April 2006 while the Kano and other sectors of the project are expected to be functional in 2007.
• Furthermore, deliberate steps have been taken to prepare Nigeria for the future mode of air navigation as exemplified by the new CNS/ATM system, which is already being implemented in Nigeria. This was made possible through the successful conduct of WGS84 survey of nine international airports and the subsequent development and publishing of GNSS approach procedures.

REFUTATION
In view of all that has been said thus far, it has become imperative for us to have this meeting with you noble professionals, as your input to the fashioning and guidance of public opinion due to its outreach and objectivity and hence government policies at large cannot be overemphasized. The meeting with you today has been necessitated due to certain happenings in the aviation industry in general.

We understand and quite sincerely sympathise with all our countrymen who rightly felt great outrage with the circumstances surrounding the unfortunate crash of BLV 210. Infact, we are equally pained by the loss of all the passengers aboard the flight, perhaps even more so, than the generality of the public. After all, our basic function and responsibility is to prevent collision of aircraft while in flight or operating on the maneuvering areas of the aerodrome. It is a responsibility that we have shouldered with all sense of responsibility, patriotic zeal, humanitarian commitment and an uncommon sacrifice.

Surely, this monumental tragedy was bound to elicit all kinds of reaction from all strata of the society. Most of these reactions from a broad cross section of the people were borne out of the genuine concern for the safety and well being of the teeming air passengers that throng our airports in the pursuit of their legitimate aspirations. Some of the reactions expressed constructive critique of the aviation industry and went ahead to profer solutions to the identified weaknesses and deficiencies of the system.

However, not all the reactions could be said to be borne out of purely altruistic motives and concern for the sustenance of the aviation industry or the safety of the passengers. It was incredible to behold some self-acclaimed "experts" in the newspapers and on TV stations who at some time in the past served the industry, contributed nothing positively but were infact part of the problems of the industry, now parading themselves as the best things to have happened to the industry. They have taken the advantage of the tragic event of recent times to embark on apparent mission of self promotion, self agrandisement and pull-down syndrome, all in an obvious execution of a well crafted script to catapult themselves into desperately coveted positions in the much maligned agencies.
It is indeed regrettable that officers who were relieved of their appointments for incompetence, glaring insubordination occasioned by inordinate ambition are now turning around to make spurious claims of some professional excellence, integrity and righteous advocacy which is quite clearly a recent phenomenon. Their pretentious claims became evident considering the fact that while some true and committed professionals appeared at the crash site and at the airport offering their expertise, these media-lusting experts who are apparently on an inexplicable mission to destroy rather than contribute to the solutions of the industry were conspicuously no where to be found.

Safety is the cornerstone of all statutes and has been the major commodity we peddle in accordance with internationally approved guidelines. In emergencies, there are laid down procedures to be followed. All the procedures leave no room for emotion in their execution, as they are basically technical issues known by all pilots and air traffic controllers. They are time-based.
This unfortunate tragedy has clearly shown that there is an urgent need for a better coordinated and responsive Search and Rescue System than the one that purportedly exists now. It has become imperative that all stakeholders come together to develop an effective system based on a cutting-edge technology that is readily accessible and clear guidelines on stakeholders responsibilities.

THE WAY FORWARD
It is little known or appreciated that for fundamental positive changes to be achieved a sound and appropriate organizational structure has to be put in place to carefully and gradually nurture the desired changes. It would surely take sometime before tangible benefits would accrue to the system but our country has often been known to be inpatient in the steady but slow implementation of processes and procedures required to take us to the desired destination. It was this negative impulse that led to the ill advised so-called aviation reforms of 1995 which led to the scrapping of FCAA and its merger with the then NAA which only took us back to the early years of the aviation.

Now is the time for painstaking evaluation and analysis of the entire system with a view to plugging any observed loopholes or areas of deficiencies and weaknesses in the aviation safety chain. This is not the time that undue sentiments, emotions would be allowed to becloud sense of judgement, our recent painful experiences not withstanding. This is not the time for grandstanding but circumstances that rather call for sober and dispassionate appraisal of all links/ingredients that would necessarily assure a safe, efficient and economic aviation system in the country.

It is an incontrovertible fact that Nigeria has recorded some strides in the development of aviation in the country in recent times. The regulatory agency NCAA has been developing expertise in core technical areas of aviation industry in the last few years through a massive training and retraining of staff in reputable institutions in several advances countries of the word. NAMA has equally performed remarkably well in the execution of its basic functions and the development of local expertise in many critical areas of its operations and both organizations would continue to improve with appropriate governmental support and encouragement.

It should also be remembered that Aviation is a system that rest on constituent sub-sectors and areas that need to be evenly developed in order to have a total system safety and efficiency. Regardless of the incredible technological advancement associated with global aviation, it is still human centered and cannot therefore be absolutely perfect. Moreover, the Aviation sector cannot quite frankly be divorced from the general technology status of the Nigerian system. Our system is perhaps a reflection of the Nigerian system though we must add that we operate above the current status in the country.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, NATCA believes that we are generally on course as far as the core aviation functions are concerned. On our own, our members will continue to practice the air traffic control profession in accordance with laid down procedures as contained in relevant ICAO documents and we shall maintain our dedication and uphold our pledge towards the growth and development of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

To our noble professional journalists, we urge you all to clarify the intricate and complex technicalities of the aviation system only from credible professionals. Let us not cause unnecessary apprehension in the minds of the Nigerian public due to an unfortunate incident as the facts to the real reasons or factors that might have caused the mishap are yet to be ascertained by the investigating authorities.

Aviation still remains the safest and most durable means of transportation the world over, please let's help to enlighten ourselves objectively.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Signed
DR. J. D. NKEMAKOLAM


BOLA AHMED