Aviation: Political Interference, A Necessary Evil. By Capt. Evarest Nnaji

I have read a lot of sanctimonious sermons from aviation practitioners over the years about the evil of political interference in our industry in Nigeria. It makes a nice pulsating conversation as it often radiates and resonates well when dressed and ornamented in safety.

Anything hooded around safety will always elicit interest and sympathy in aviation world, home and abroad.

But as a practitioner, an aviator and investor, I have seen a lot about “interference” whether political and institutional. To me, interference can come from political office holders or from regulators themselves. It just depends on the intention of the one who is interfering and whether the interference is for good or for evil purpose.

I, for an example, in no distant past, had had to encounter a regulator who either did not like my gut or did not like the size of my ears and thereby decided alongside his lieutenants to close down my operation.

Every inconceivable, written and unwritten, regulatory clauses man can fathom were quoted and bandied to inflict damage and circumvent our operation. Practically, in one occasion, it took just a phone call from a politician who reported that a helicopter landed on a “walk-way” in his area for our entire operations, in the whole of Nigeria, to be grounded for two days. And that was ever before sending an inspector to find out or to clarify what the caller meant by walkway, or ever hearing from us, the operator. I heard threats and harassments heading precipitously towards grounding my operation and destroying my millions of dollars worth of investment before I reached out for “political interference.” In fact, some years after, someone who was in the band actually, over a class of wine, joked and said “I remember when we were mandated to come up with something to closed down this place.”

As for Autonomy, we all fought for it; stampeded and taunted government officials  and policy makers until they had nowhere to turn than to cave in. A great success, but our collective energy and effort, regulators as well as operators. So, I cannot in all honesty stated here that political interference, or any interference for that matter, is a way forward, but our society is still bedeviled with demonized humans who if completely left unchecked can be palpable monsters. In other words, some of our people are not yet broad minded enough to be completely trusted to be “honest and transparent.”

I strongly believe that the Autonomy we have in place is resounding enough to support and protect any regulator who knows his onions. With what we have in place, you can refuse and rebuff any obnoxious pressure from people in power if their request or inquiry is not legitimate. For instance, I don’t know on which leg anyone, Minister or from National Assembly, would stand to insist that you issue pilot license to someone who is no qualified. But starts if that person “not qualified” believes and can prove that you have issued pilot license to another person in his category and takes the case to someone in power. You will, in such case,  automatically lose your moral grounds to be honest and transparent; and at such, when you cry “interference,” the monster described in the bible book of Job chapter 41 shows up in your mirror.

To me, and for now, we have no good reason to complain. We have one of the best aviation regulations in the world today; thank God we got it through when we did. All that is needed from every interested party is to be purely professional in our conducts.

Nnaji, a Businessman and aviator wrote in from Abuja. [myad]