THE recent call by Aviation Round Table (ART)  members that the transport and the aviation ministry should be merged while the aviation

ministry should be scrapped and its functions brought under the ministry of transport has continued to generate ripples in the sector.

Joining the opponents of the ART suggestion during the week was the Managing Director of Belujane Konsult, Chris Aligbe, who said such a merger would not work for the aviation industry.

Aligbe based his position on an earlier merger done in the past which he said never worked until it was reversed.

“ I strongly disagree with this position. One, because it had been done before and it never succeeded. Remember that the present petroleum minister, Alison Diezani-Madueke, was the transport minister when Mr Felix Hayat was in charge of aviation. Aviation and transport were merged, but throughout that period, nothing literarily happened in the aviation sector because attention was on the transport sector. So, it had been tried, but did not work and that was why it was demerged again.

“And it is not going to work in our own situation now simply because of the fact  that those two ministries are completely on the ground. Transport sector is even better than the aviation sector because it comprises the road, rail and maritime sectors. If you look at all of them, they all have problems and that is why the government has focused strongly on the transport sector, trying to revive the railway sector. Looking at the maritime sector and the road transport is another major problem in the country.

“Look at aviation, the sector is really on the ground. Look at the airport sub-sector, we don’t have any airport that we can beat our chest and say we are proud of as at today except a few of the state- owned and the private airports like the MMA2, Asaba airport and Akwa Ibom airport. These are some of the airports, but in terms of the airline operations and airport systems, these airports don’t make any serious addition to what it is because they are still new destinations.

“Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) too as an institution is being brought up gradually, it hasn’t come back to what it should be.

Look at NAMA, it has just got a new  management in place as the past removals of professionals in the agency really affected it. NCAA has acquired some stability, but it is not firmed up. If the DG of NCAA leaves office today, people will be worried who is next? Yes, there are people that will step in, but the truth is NCAA has only managed to stabilise.   We feel proud with what has happened in NCAA, but that does not mean we can beat our chests to say we have an institution that is firmly stabilised .”

“Today, we need a very strong minister who can take the sector to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and I think that for once, we are lucky we have a very strong minister of aviation. This is the time we need to rally round and build up the industry, or else, we will go no way.”