Capt. Alex Badeh Jr, NSIB DG
The Director General, Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), Capt. Alex Badeh Jr has castigated the proposal to reduce the Bureau’s share of Ticket Sales Charge TSC from six to four percent, saying it will impact negatively on accident investigation and safety of the sector.
Speaking virtually on Friday with aviation correspondents, on the bureau’s activities for first half of 2026, he said safety is the ultimate watchword for the sector and that any move that will not promote safety should not be welcome by stakeholders.
“If you think safety is expensive, try an accident, we are all in this sector and we know that such proposal is going to affect the NSIB negatively, it is not a workable solution to any issue”, he said.
The aviation industry had been under intense public scrutiny as agencies in the sector engage in a brickbat over the outcome of a proposed bill in the National Assembly, which seeks to alter the sharing formula from the revenue remitted by airlines into the account of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), as five percent value of their flight operations otherwise known as Ticket Sales Charge (TSC), and Cargo Sales Charge (CSC).
The NCAA, over the years has been the custodian of the TSC/ CSC, which is shared among other agencies including : Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) , Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) and Nigerian Safety Investigative Bureau ( NSIB) .
In the Nigerian aviation sector, the statutory five percent TSC and Cargo Sales Charge CSC are currently distributed in an arrangement that allocates 56 percent to the NCAA, 22 percent to NAMA, nine percent to NIMET and a paltry seven percent to the NCAT, whereas the NSIB gets a negligible six percent.
The NSIB DG strongly rejected it on Friday as it said its multimodal nature now requires dedicated funding.
He also lamented the non-remittances of funds by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) , to the bureau saying only the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) had lived up to its expectations as NIMASA claimed it is not in its act.
While calling for sustainable funding, Badeh Jr expressed hope that the bureau’s proposal in the new budget would up funding for investigations.
“We are working on a sustainable funding framework and had proposed to the Presidency and we are hoping that with the new budget, we will have our own strong funding. We would like to say that whatever modes we are investigating, it is still Nigerians that are using these modes of transportation, therefore there must be sustainable funding for us”, he said.
Meanwhile, the DG said the Bureau is fully ready to assume the Multimodal investigating mandate but needs more staff, especially in road accident investigation.
“We have the expertise in maritime , we are bringing in more foreign resource persons to train with us, we are fully grounded on maritime investigation but an experienced road accident investigator is assuming duties soon . Generally, we need to hire, I think we can look inward and try to build capacity first with those that are interested before opening up the floodgates again to hire people, we have 407 employees, we need more personnel”, he added.
