Expert seeks FG probe of NCAA 5% on tickets, cargoes
*Chides agencies on misleading figures
The Federal Government has been urged to probe the five per cent earnings on Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) and charges on cargo.
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is a regulatory agency statutorily responsible for the oversight of the safety, security and economic wellbeing of the Nigeria civil aviation industry.
By statutes in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Acts (CAA) 2006, the NCAA is tasked in the Part 12 (1) of the Act to collect on behalf of itself and four other aviation agencies, five per cent charges on all the airlines passengers’ ticket sales, air chartered services charges, cargo freight charges etc. for the development and improvement of safety and security infrastructural systems, services and human capital development of related operations in the aviation sector.
Speaking to Woleshadarenews in Lagos, aviation consultant, Group Capt. John Ojikutu (Rtd) said unfortunately, the manner the recordings of the earnings from these statutory charges had been handled by the NCAA and its consultants in the last 10 years and still being handled today is very unsatisfactory.
He stated that nobody, not even the National Assembly in its oversight responsibility of the sector, cared to know the gross and net earnings from the statutory charges and the losses too through manipulation of figures; all of which run into billions of naira every year.
He disclosed that the other four aviation agencies like the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) and Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) that share the earnings from the charges in the ratio of 23%, 3%, 7%, 9% respectively, appeared to be complacent and contented with whatever is given to them by the NCAA whose share is 58%.
Ojikutu who was also Commandant, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos alleged that none of them appeared to have knowledge on how to assess the true or actual amount that is collected yearly from those charges.
His words, “They all have challenges of insufficient funds for developing and improving their infrastructures and the manpower needed to sustain their operations”.
“The consequences of the manipulation of the records figures and the exploitation of the earnings by those charged or contracted by the NCAA to collect the charges and the complacency of the major shareholders of the earnings are grave on safety operations activities and services of both the government and the private operators in the sector”.
He noted that at a press conference in February, 2017, the NCAA released a report that showed earnings from airlines ticket sales alone for the year 2015 and 2016 as N385 billion and N330 billion respectively.
These figures according to him were not broken down to elucidate the earnings for neither international nor domestic passengers but could implied that the 5% Ticket Sales Charges (TSC) from these earnings would be about N19.25 billion and N16.5 billion respectively for 2015 and 2016.
He described these figures are misleading when compared with the records available at the NCAA DATR on the 5% TSC for the international and domestic airlines ticket sales alone especially from January to December 2016 which was N15.1bn in naira and $23.5m in dollar or a total of N23.3bn in naira.
“If N23.3bn was the recorded 5% TSC on the ticket sales alone in 2016 by the NCAA DATR, the Ticket Sales Earnings therefore cannot be N330bn as presented by the NCAA at the February 2017 conference but N466bn; a difference of N136bn”.
“At the same 2017 press conference, the NCAA recorded passengers traffic figures of 11.4m and `11.3m for 2015& 2016 respectively are also misleading when taken against the figures of 15.2m and 14.2m recorded respectively for the same periods by FAAN “the -passengers’ -gate – keeper” at all the national airports. The NCAA also recorded 3,272,331 for each of the same years, for international passengers while the FAAN figures were 4.30m and 4.20m respectively”.
“Similarly, for the same period, the NCAA domestic passengers’ traffic figures were 8.1m and 8.0m respectively, while FAAN recorded 10.2m and 10.9m respectively for the same period”, he added.
To him, the huge difference of over four million between FAAN and NCAA on the overall passengers figure for each of the two years and in particular the difference of over 1m in the international passengers figure are gaps of holes that made the NCAA recorded airlines ticket sales earnings of N385bn and N330bn for 2015 and 2016 misleading and questionable.
“There are evidences also from government and private operators and from international organisation records in 2016 and 2017 that showed the earnings on international passengers ticket sales alone to be more than NCAA recorded earnings for the same years and in many other years . These earnings are generally more than 80% of the total airlines Ticket Sales”.
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