Sen. Hadi Sirika displaying the certificate on Monday
…says Nigeria’s aviation capacity has improved
By Sade Williams
For deploying personnel within Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for the first time to work effortlessly at retaining the Category one status that was first awarded to Nigeria in 2010 by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (US-FAA), Senator Hadi Sirika, Aviation Minister has applauded the Authority for looking inwards to achieve such feat.
Speaking at the official presentation of the certificate of retention by the Director General of NCAA, Capt. Muhtar Usman, on Monday, Sirika said the development shows that the Nigeria’s aviation human capacity is now at par with global rating.
According to him, ‘We thank the NCAA for doing us proud in retaining this status, it is very significant to note that this was not achieved with external assistance rather the NCAA officials did it all, the fact that we did it in-house means that our capacity has improved.
“The travelling public may not know the importance of the NCAA, in fact they think the NCAA is the least important in the sector, it is not, but we will continue to ensure that those things that matter like passenger comfort and good experience are in place’, he said.
Earlier, Usman, who had explained that the NCAA did not engage external consultants at achieving the result, added that the Authority did not also request for extra funds to carry out the job neither did it borrow money from any Agency.
“Sometimes in 2010, Nigeria attained Category One status, we sustained it in 2014 and now retained in 2018, this time around, we deployed in-house personnel, we did not rely on external assistance and we were able to retain it”, he said.
