Poor Airport Rating: No Cause for Alarm, NAMA Assures Passengers

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Ayodele Afolabi, Abuja

BALTIMORE, MD (AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, Mr. Ibrahim Abdulsalam, has assured air travellers in Nigeria of adequate safety as necessary facilities had been put in place to forestall plane crashes in the country.

The NAMA boss made the assurance on Thursdaay while making submissions before the senate ad-hoc committee on Aviation, on efforts being made by his agency to make the nation’s aviation sector more viable and safe for travellers.

Despite the recent rating of the nation’s airports as being among the worst in the World, he said his agency had acquired a central radar system stationed in Lagos and Kano to monitor aircrafts in the nation’s airspace.

He noted that from the Lagos radar Centre, the operators could view what is happening at the Kano Centre and Vice versa. He added that the radar was of two ways, one civil and another military but clarified that it was not as if the military alone would use its own.

He said, “For now, the whole of Nigeria airspace is covered but the aircrafts operators had to cooperate with us.

Abdulsalam, also said that calibration, an aviation device which enables the aircraft to land safely, had been outsourced because Nigeria abandoned its aircraft that was configured for calibration for over 20 years and become unserviceable.

He said, “We used to have the facility for calibration but the aircraft was left unservicable for 20 years”

He noted that though his agency needed to calibrate, there is no local company to calibrate. hence it had no choice than to go outside the country.

Chairman of the senate panel, Senator Rabiu Kwankaso, urged the agency to train more pilots on calibration while efforts should be made to acquire more of the facilities since they are not too expensive.