Business
Minister Solicits Support In The Aviation Sector
The Minister of Aviation, Mrs Stella Oduah, has called on stakeholders in aviation industry to collaborate with the Federal Government to resuscitate the industry.
Oduah, who made the call during her tour of Akwa Ibom International Airport, Uyo, at the weekend, said the collaboration was necessary to enable the industry meet international best practices.
The minister said if other state governments could invest in aviation, it would help in boosting the economy through job creation.
She described aviation business as lucrative and as such, should not be left in the hands of government alone.
The minister said that facilities at some of airports were old and needed to be changed.
“We call on all stakeholders to join hands with the Federal Government to bring our airports to global standards, which is our reason for stressing the need for Public and Private Partnership (PPP).
“The aviation industry does not belong to the government alone, we need everybody to build it up because we want to ensure that the global standard of aviation in Nigeria is maintained.
“Most of the facilities at the airports are old and they need to be changed and government cannot do this alone except people come in and support to build the aviation industry together.’’
Earlier, the minister lauded the Akwa Ibom government for building an international airport and urged the state to join hands with the Federal Government to maintain the facility.
She said such collaboration was necessary in view of the fact that “the infrastructure to maintain the aircraft are not available because these are very capital intensive projects.
“For Akwa Ibom to embark upon it we have to collaborate with them, the platform within which we do the collaboration is what we are going to standardise, the implementation strategy would be through a PPP.
“The international standard that we talk about has to be put in place most importantly is the fact that hanger is a very lucrative business and so we are urging investors and our engineers to come gether to be part of this collaboration”.