Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, made this known at the
weekly ministerial press briefing organized by the Presidential Communication
Team led by the President’s spokesman, Mr Femi Adesina, at the presidential
villa, Abuja.
Sirika explained that the university would be world class
and would collaborate with some famous institutions.
“Believe me, civil aviation alone can sustain our economy.
Ethiopia is half-Nigeria, there are 85 million people and their major source of
income and economy is Ethiopian Airlines.
“So, civil aviation alone can actually run an economy, it
depends on how you do it.
“But we have seen that we are not producing anything out of
civil aviation and all the aviation ventures in the country keep collapsing and
that has compounded the problem.
“We attribute that to the lack of capacity to manage.
“So we are going to establish the institution in partnership
with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), other friendly
countries and some universities around the world.
“So, it will be a world class university and there is a
small team working on it now. We have submitted our concept notes to the
Nigerian Universities Commission and it is being attended to.
“I think this university will come up very soon, before the
end of the year. The Minister of the FCT has given us the land. It will be half
online and half real time studies.”
He expressed optimism that the university when operational
would boost activities as well as produce the needed manpower in the aviation
sector.
“We started this journey in civil aviation with countries
like Brazil.
“We started our own in Zaria in 1963, with a partnership
between Nigerian government and the UNDP and since then, till now, we don’t
produce even rivets as a nation but Brazil that we started with is now
producing all sorts of aircraft.
“So, we think that we should have a university to go deeply
into research and development and create those opportunities within our sector
and turn out those young men and women with good brains to go into the venture
of aerospace and aviation,” he said.