Violators of N36B MMA2 concession pact must go to jail-Senate

The Senate has called for the prosecution of Federal Government officials that negotiated the N36b concession that gave birth to Murtala Muhammed Airport 2 (MMA2) but reneged on implementing the pact.

This was the recommendation of the Senate Committee on Aviation after its fact finding mission to the ultra-modern MMA2 terminal in Lagos.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Privatisation, Mr. Ben Murray Bruce stated that the people who negotiated the contract must go to jail for not implementing the contract.

The disclosure by Bruce could open up former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode and many former Managing Directors of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to scrutiny.

The ex-Minister was instrumental to the agreement that all domestic flights would originate from the new terminal; a condition that allowed the terminal operator to invest N36 billion to build the facility.

While Fani-Kayode went the extra to ensure implantation of the agreement, successive Ministers of Aviation had frustrated efforts to implement the pact, alleging that the deal was skewed in favour of Bi-Courtney.

The FAAN had allegedly also frustrated every plan to comply with the agreement.

It would be recalled that Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had in 2008 directed former Minister of Aviation, Babatunde Omotoba and a former Managing Director of FAAN to implement the agreement, lampooning them for frustrating the project described as the first ever Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement in the country.

The business mogul stated that no matter the complain that trailed the concession pact, the idea of choosing which agreement to implement by successive governments has contributed to investors not investing in the sector.

He said the government was aware of what it signed, adding that common dictates that they keep to the tenets of the agreement, stressing that Bi-Courtney should not be held responsible for the incompetence of people who inked the deal on the part of government.

He disclosed that he would lobby his colleagues in the Senate to ensure that aviation gets zero allocation in the 2017 budget. He noted that the private sector can fix the myriad of infrastructure gaps in the aviation industry.

His words, “The MMA2 agreement is binding and must be implemented. If you don’t implement that agreement, you will frighten away investors. We have reputation of not keeping to agreements. We read in the papers that the Federal Government wants to concession multiple airports. The billions of naira we would have used will be devoted to education.”

“There is an agreement that West African flights will also depart from MMA2 but that has not happened. Why has it not happened?

He said the Senate would summon the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika on why the FAAN and the Ministry of Aviation before now had consistently found it difficult to respect the deal it signed many years ago.

“We will summon the Minister to come and explain his own side of the story as to why Bi-Courtney is not treated well or not allowed to succeed and correct the mistakes. Aviation will get zero budgetary allocation in 2017 because most of these problems in aviation can be fixed by the private sector. Agreement signed between the Federal Government and Bi-Courtney must be honoured.”

Chief Executive Officer of BASL, Capt Jari Williams lamented that the firm has continued to lose money because of the constraints and hindrances put in place by FAAN and heavily supported by the Ministry of Aviation.

He stated that FAAN has consistently breached the concession and has continued to violate the agreement, “most notably with the redevelopment and continued operations of the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) in contravention of the exclusivity clause in the agreement with the company.”

He further lamented that the GAT operations has reduced by more than 50 per cent the revenue expectations of MMA2, which was projected to process four million passengers annually in order to be able to pay back its huge indebtedness within the approved operations phase of the concession agreement.