Officials of FAAN told THISDAY that the expenditures eroded
the agency’s revenue, coupled with the compulsory 50 per cent deduction by the
federal government from FAAN, a development, they said, deprived FAAN of the
needed funds to carry out targeted projects like the resurfacing of runways,
the rehabilitation of terminals, installation of airfield lighting at some
airports, including its inability to conduct some essential training for its
personnel. They said FAAN had to delay the completion of on-going projects due
to paucity of funds.
A former Head of Commercials in FAAN, Mr. Ade Kolawole, told
THISDAY that the former Minister should not have moved FAAN headquarters to
Abuja because there was nothing on ground in terms of structure to accommodate
the relocation of personnel, noting that besides the airport offices, FAAN did
not have any facility to even accommodate its directors and general managers.
“So, it was the Managing Director that moved to Abuja and
because most of the activities of FAAN were domiciled in Lagos, he has to
return to Lagos any other day. While the Managing Director was in Abuja, all
other members of staff were in Lagos. So, senior officials like directors and
general managers have to incur flight expenses, hotel accommodation and
allowances going to see the Managing Director in Abuja.
“These personnel accrued per diem, which is daily allowance,
which an employer pays to employee to cover living expenses when travelling on
the employer’s business. This encouraged the directors to be travelling to
Abuja regularly. So, that relocation made people to make so much money from
FAAN. FAAN has nothing in Abuja except rented places; unfortunately, those who
moved to Abuja moved nothing because all other activities are still going on in
Lagos, where FAAN generates 70 per cent of its revenue, which it used to
service other airports in the country. Besides the movement of the Managing
Director, FAAN’s headquarters has technically remained in Lagos,” Mr. Kolawole
said.
A former Deputy General Manager, Accounts at FAAN, Mr.
Philip Emeto, also told THISDAY that the relocation of FAAN headquarters to
Abuja was simply decided on sentiments because Lagos is the hub of airlines
operations both domestic and international carriers, noting that Abuja is
political headquarters of Nigeria and not its commercial centre.
“FAAN has no land or quarters in Abuja to accommodate the
staff; in fact, there is no structure. As far as FAAN is concerned; that
decision to relocate headquarters to Abuja was a wrong decision but nobody was
courageous to speak against it. To me, that decision did not make any sense and
it gave rise to colossal loss of funds to FAAN. That relocation was costing
FAAN a lot of money. So much money was paid for hotel accommodation; how can
FAAN break even? The best thing that has happened to FAAN is the decision of
President Tinubu to return the headquarters back to Lagos. Government should
not mix commercial activities with politics. Ministers can stay in Abuja; they
are not professionals; they are political appointees. Relocating FAAN to Abuja
has nothing to do with the generation of revenue, as Lagos is the base of FAAN
source of revenue.
“I do not know why government likes to waste resources. How
can you be removed from a place where you have economic advantage to another
place where you have no structure at all to accommodate personnel as offices,
no living quarters and what happens to the offices you will leave behind in
Lagos. You will have empty offices in Lagos and no offices in Abuja; unless you
rent them. It does not make any sense to me. It is only government that can
encourage such wastefulness,” Emeto said.
FAAN had earlier made it clear that the reason why the
Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, decided that FAAN should relocate its
headquarters to Lagos was to save the huge expenses the agency incurs operating
in an environment where it has no office accommodation for its personnel.
FAAN had explained that the members of staff who had earlier
moved to Abuja affected by the decision, had returned to Lagos, as there is no
office space for them in Abuja. It was ill-advised in the first place to move
the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to
accommodate all of them at once.
“Having returned to Lagos, the authority will be liable to
pay them duty tour allowance because technically they are working ‘out of
station, as their official posting is to Abuja, and the Minister has decided to
stop this waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse,” Emeto
further said.
According to FAAN, “The other option open to the Authority
was abandon the old FAAN building in Lagos to rot away and to use its scarce
resources to rent an office space in Abuja for Millions of Naira of public
money when in actual fact more than sixty percent of its activities are in
Lagos, given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports. The stakeholders
and the Minister decided against that and to save the country this waste.”
As the Federal Capital Territory, FAAN said that it would
relocate to Abuja when it has put the necessary structures in place in order to
mitigate the current expenses it incurs due to the absence of these facilities.
“The Minister has rolled out plans to get concessionaires to
build befitting offices for the Authority in Lagos and Abuja, and until that is
done, the Authority will continue to manage its old building in Lagos that can
accommodate all its directors and senior officials for now. Abuja continues to
have full operational offices and the authority has not scaled down operations
in Abuja one bit. It is just the technical decision of where the authority has
its ‘corporate headquarters’ that has been taken without affecting the
structure of operations as they are for now in both cities. In
the near future, when befitting corporate buildings will be built for the
authority in both Lagos and Abuja, a final decision will be taken as to the
location of the permanent headquarters, depending on the exigencies of the
time,” the agency said in a statement.
0 comments:
Post a Comment