‘Lack Of Proper Planning, Bane of Infrastructure Damage’

Lack of planning,

funding, poor maintenance culture and personnel have been identified as factors that lead to the infrastructure decay at the airports.

Speaking at the Aviation Infrastructure Summit at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Annex, Director of Operations of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mr George Uriesi cautioned FAAN to refrain from just toeing the slogan: “The best Airports in the world without actually doing anything concrete to improve on itself and be among the best airports”.

Mr Uriesi said the airport buildings were run down and lack of planning has prevented proactive and timely budgeting, thereby causing a huge backlog in maintenance and replacement of vital assets.

The FAAN director observed that lack of planning has also prevented the adoption and application of modern airport solutions and international best practices in the airport environment, pointing out the reason is because of severely diminished organisational capability arising from lack of commitment and proper investment in people development resulting in widespread ignorance of modern airport management practices and processes.

He said: “Structural deficiencies are impeding focus on the right things. Top-down and down-up apathy and disinterest led to a lack of ownership and an established norm of doing things the wrong way”, adding, “a complete transformation is required.”

According to him, FAAN will soon commission a master plan for the Murtala Mohammed Airport.

The conveyor of the summit, Mr Albinus Chiedu in his welcome address explained that the theme was inspired by constraints of airport growth and development and how this lack of infrastructure poses problems to airline operators, airport users and service providers.

Chiedu stated that massive maintenance, acquisition and replacement backlog in infrastructure is required across the aviation industry and posited that this would take huge funds injection or massive private sector investment in aviation infrastructure because as he put it, government cannot do it alone. He, therefore, called on the government to create a conducive environment that would attract local and foreign investors.

“Government on its part must create a conducive environment that would attract local and foreign investment”, Uriesi declared.