MMA2: PPP model still holds the ace

By Steve Omolale

 One of the major challenges facing Nigeria today is the embarrassing dearth of public infrastructure. The country’s geometric rise in population over the last decades has led to too much pressure on the available public facilities, rendering them inadequate. Massive corruption in the public sector has not helped matters either, and this cuts across all the sectors of the economy.

But in saner climes where those at the helm attach much importance to the comfort of their people, they involve experts in the private sector to use their expertise in providing, managing and sustaining public infrastructure in what is called Public-Private Partnership (PPP). And this is why there is efficiency in all parts of their life.

In Nigeria, this kind of efficiency is obvious in the aviation sector, where the first successful PPP in the country, the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two, widely referred to as MMA2, is still sustained to date. With the success of MMA2 over the years, one would have thought the governments at various levels would replicate such a PPP in other sectors to make life easy for the citizens, but unfortunately, they did not.

Today, the majority of Nigerians have no access to potable water, live in darkness due to the shambolic privatisation of public power supply executed by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, ride on rough roads and suffer for almost everything under the sun.

But over the last 18 years, MMA2 has demonstrated that PPP is the way out of the country’s epileptic infrastructure. Despite the economic challenges which have killed many organisations, the terminal operators, Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), have proved that the private sector still holds the ace when it comes to providing and managing public enterprises. The operators keep sustaining aviation standards in terminal management, not minding the huge costs of doing so, as almost all the facilities at the terminal are imported.

With huge financial outlays and the unflinching and continuous support of its Chairman, Dr. Wale Babalakin (SAN), BASL has transformed the operations of MMA2 through an unparalleled commitment to technological innovations, a decision that enhances terminal efficiency and improves passenger travel experience. 

With free and secured Wi-Fi, Flight Information Display Screens (FIDS), Common User Passenger Processing System (CUPPS), more Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to enhance the security of lives and property and a digital cold room for perishable cargoes, among many other innovations, the firm has taken travel experience through the terminal to a different level.

Not stopping at this, the firm keeps training and retraining its personnel across the board, especially Aviation Security (AVSEC) and customer care personnel. This is to ensure cautiousness in attending to passengers and other terminal users, as expected in the aviation industry.

This, according to the acting Chief Operating Officer (COO), Mr. Remi Jibodu, is a demonstration of the way the private sector can efficiently make any government enterprise a success, adding that all this could also be replicated in other ineffective terminals across the country and the West African sub-region, if allowed.

Economic experts who believe the government has no business in all businesses have always made a case for PPP in providing and maintaining public facilities in the country, as it is done in other parts of the world, with its attendant value-adding advantage.

In fact, China, with about 10,000 projects valued at over 15 trillion yuan, has the largest PPP scheme in the world. Well-developed economies like Canada, the United States, Britain, Japan and India, among several others, have also been enjoying the huge potential offered by PPP to transform their public infrastructure.

It is therefore high time Nigeria keyed in into this gold mine to provide and sustain its public infrastructure. But, for it to successfully do so, honesty and open-mindedness must be the watchwords of its officials. 

*Omolale, a journalist, writes from Lagos

Wole Shadare