Nigeria’s revenue from passengers in two years up by N1tr
*Expert faults NCAA’s N715.9B figure
There are indications that the Federal Government generated over N1 trillion in revenue from the 2015 and 2016 international and domestic passenger traffic according to Aviation consultant and Chief Executive Officer of Centurion Aviation Security, Group Capt. John Ojikutu (rtd).
Ojikutu told Woleshadare.net that if each passenger of the eight million domestic passengers and three million international passengers traffic presented by Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) paid an average of N15, 000 and N250, 000 respectively, the earnings will be more than N1 trillion.
He stated that the estimated figures for only the embarking passengers should be about 50 per cent of the cumulative passengers traffic figures which should bring the earnings on ticket sales at the same rate per passenger to about N470 billion for each year. This, he said was at variance with the figures released penultimate week.
The Director-General of NCAA, Capt. Muhtar Usman had presented earnings of both the domestic and international airlines from passengers’ tickets sales that were N385.9 billion and N330 billion for 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Ojikutu alleged that there were some ambiguities in the passengers and air traffic data presented by Usman which he stated were very much at variance with other available statistics.
He reiterated that the aviation regulatory body should have taken into consideration the figures available with the substantive custodians of passenger traffic and air traffic movement which are the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA).
“For instance while NCAA recorded a cumulative 11 million passenger traffic in 2015, FAAN had a record of over 14 million passengers and 250,512 air traffic in the same year; a difference of over 3.8 million for passengers traffic and 13,667 for air traffic. These figures if comparatively taken into consideration, could have clarified whether the airlines earnings were estimates or actual”, he added.
Ojikutu alleged that the agency did not separate or distill and make public the domestic airlines specific earnings.
Additionally, he noted that the NCAA five per cent charges on ticket sales were not distilled from each of the two years ticket sales earnings, stressing that it also did not present the debts owed by these airlines to the various services providers, despite the high number of delays, cancellations and shutdown of the operations of some of them in 2016 by their creditors.
He further stated that in particular, it would have been interesting to know the debt portfolios of the airlines to their creditors before some of them were taken over by the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).
His words, “While the debts profiles of some of the airlines were already in the public domain before the press conference, the NCAA had evidently not been monitoring continuously the operations of the airlines for the purpose of ensuring their financial capabilities for safe and sustainable services.”
“In compliance with the provision of NCARs Part 18.10.5, It also did not provide evidence at the press conference that it has ensured that the government operators too have individually complied with the provisions of the NCARs Part 18.7.5.1-3 which required them to “submit to NCAA, a 5 Year business plan and their financial returns every year or at such periodic intervals in formant as may be prescribed by NCAA.”
It would be recalled that the NCAA boss recorded and presented passenger traffic movement for only nine months in 2015 and 2016 whereas, it recorded earnings for 12 months in 2015 and 10 months in 2016.
According to the expert, “If the figures of the remaining three months for the most recent year 2016 could be excused, not including or presenting the three months of October – December in 2015 after 13 months is questionable.”
NCAA showed it recorded no significant change in the domestic passenger traffic movement however, the domestic air traffic movement (130,745) figures showed substantial drop of 45 per cent in 2016 if compared to 2015 (202,352) figures.
On the other hand, in the same year, there was no change in the international passenger but there was a rise of five per cent increase in international air traffic movement.
Ojikutu disclosed that the year 2016 was the period when the domestic airlines were complaining more about scarcity of fuel, yet in the midst of the scarcity, the international carriers were getting extra fuel needed for their flights and for the five per cent increase, describing as an irony.
“It was the year when the domestic airlines recorded more flight delays, cancellations and shutdown.”
