When dog eat dog in aviation
Call it a case of dog eat dog and you will not be far from the truth. The on-going face-off that has pit the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), members of Air Transport Service Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) and the National Association of Air craft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) has assumed a different dimension. But it is good to situate facts and try to call a spade a spade.
While NAAPE is holding strongly to what it described as irregularity in the secondment of the outgoing President of ATSSSAN, Mr. Benjamin Okewu, AIB which has found itself at the centre of this whole mess is trying to justify why Okewu deserves his secondment which NAAPE described as ‘fraudulent’ and one that has set a very dangerous precedent.
My fear is that in all of this, the various aviation unions are the ones that are the losers in this whole saga that could do incalculable damage to them and see them as highly compromised. They have even shown that in many cases that have exposed them as people who rush to where their bread are buttered.
NAAPE has come under scathing criticism and allegation of being used to sabotage AIB and Okewu. This is an allegation that cannot be substantiated, but one that looks plausible.
In the past one year, the AIB has been confirmed as the most petitioned aviation agency and each time this is done, the agency comes out stronger with various graft commission throwing it away for want of evidence and exonerated AIB Commissioner, Dr. Felix Abali.
The rivalry and bad belle syndrome has led to instability, causing huge disaffection to a system that is fragile and highly life dependent.
The deluge of petitions is baffling. A top official of AIB who spoke to woleshadare.net attributed the petitions to people he described as job seekers and who want to remove Abali from office same way Dr. Sam Oduselu was forced out of service.
We at Woleshadare.net do not in any way support incompetence or graft as we have championed and supported every effort at curbing graft. The aviation industry stinks to the high heaven but what should not be condoned is trying to cause serious disaffection in the system.
It is on record that NAAPE played ignominious role in seeing to the ouster of one of Nigeria’s aviation professional, Dr. Harold Olusegun Demuren who was the Director-General of Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Inspite Demuren’s sterling qualities, these cabals in the name of NAAPE connived with a female Minister of Aviation to ease him out of the system after allegation that they were financially induced to carry out their sinister motive.
They acted in consonance with a very highly respected aviation consultant to carry out their wicked action. One of the leaders of NAAPE carried on like an emperor with too heavily armed Policemen giving him protection likened to that of a governor. What a shame!
A source recalled that the National President of NAAPE, Isaac Balami in one of his meetings with the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika had criticised all the aviation agencies’ helmsmen and openly called for the removal of the AIB’s commissioner even when NAAPE was yet to be inaugurated in the bureau.
The source said it was curious that the leadership of NAAPE would not fight for the general welfare of its members but rather pursues personal war against the management. The source wondered why NAAPE that could not address the injustice done to its members in AIB following the recruitment done under a former minister would be fighting for members of another union.
The source alleged that the recent eyebrow raised against the secondment of Okewu to AIB was a distraction. Investigations reveal that some of the unionists don’t want Okewu in AIB and they have vowed to fight him to a standstill and also our management for accepting him. Since the association was inaugurated, it has been fighting personal battles, rather than the welfares of its members, which should be the primary aim of any association or union.
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