The Minister of Aviation,
Mr Osita  Chidoka, has urged the managers of airports across the country to up their ante through efficient service delivery for the overall purpose of ensuring safety, security and efficiency in the industry.
Mr Chidoka, who gave the advice at his maiden meeting with the airport managers, said the call has become imperative in order to achieve the critical objective of making air travel safe, secure and pleasurable for all air inbound and outbound passengers.
He said “We want to ensure that standards are maintained at the airports and that those who use the airports will also feel the impact of the work of the airport managers”.
He described the maiden meeting with the airport managers as an important step in the ministry’s efforts to improve operations of the nation’s airports. He stated that, aside the higher authorities, such as the minister, permanent secretary, Director Generals and General Managers, the critical persons on the ground are airport manager.
“We thought the need to interact with you one on one and to share my vision of the airport with you, to listen to your challenges so as to ensure a performance based management system for our airports”, he said.
The Minister warned that it is no longer going to be business as usual for all airport operations in the country, stating “the airport manager’s position is no more place for you to stay until you retire”.
It is now the place where you remain by your performance, because there are many young officers waiting to be given opportunity and so if you do not deliver you will be brought out and another person who can do the job better will fill the space”, Chidoka said.
He also noted, “the status of every airport manager delivering an output will be made public so that everybody, including your children will see it and anybody who goes will see whether you have done it or haven’t done what you have agreed to do, so we are interested in performance measurement”.
“My job as minister has three roles, that is, to measure all the work that we and see that there is monitoring, measuring and improving on set standards. When I met the MDs’ and DOs, I told them about this paradigm,” he declared.
According to him, standard performance indices will now be set for the managers. This, he said, will lead to documenting sufficiently, expectation of each airport manager, the output of the airport manager, adding that what such manager has committed to doing would be required by the ministry to create a common minimum standards across all the airports.
In his remark, the Director General, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Mr SAleh Dumonah, applauded the minister for the meeting which provided them with the unique opportunity to rob minds on critical issues and challenges facing airport administrators in the country.

President Goodluck Jonathan (right) congratulating Minister of Aviation, Mr Osita Chidoka, during his swearing-in in Abuja recently.