Oduah: Journalists barred from aviation crisis meeting

                     

Journalists were on Tuesday prevented from covering a stakeholders’ session on the crisis in the aviation sector.

The session in Abuja had industry professionals in attendance.

Prior to the event, its organisers had invited the media but on getting to the venue of the programme, they said the meeting was not meant for coverage by journalists.

In a bid to placate reporters, the media coordinator of the programme said that a communiqué would be sent across to them, stressing that the programme was a closed-door event.

The meeting had in attendance aviation elders and three key unions in the sector—the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria; National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers; and the National Union of Air Transport Employees.

Nigeria’s aviation sector has been a focus of public outrage and  media discourse following the recent series of air mishaps and the controversial purchase of two armoured cars by the aviation minister, Stella Oduah, at N255m.

President Goodluck Jonathan has appointed a three-man panel to investigate the car deal while Oduah was stopped from signing the aviation bilateral agreement with Israel on behalf of Nigeria.

In her stead, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Viola Onwuliri, penned the document.

Meanwhile, participants at the aviation trouble shooting programme, who spoke after the event’s first session, said it was high time that suitably qualified personnel were allowed to run the offices in the sector.

A former Managing Director of the defunct Nigerian Airways, Capt. Paul Thahal, said, “I believe that we should put the right people in the right place that can do the job properly. Not people like us that are old, but all we are interested in is for young people to be trained properly for the business.”

Asked if Nigerian airlines had adequately trained personnel for their businesses, Thahal said, “Certainly we do not have enough and we need to have more. But more importantly, training is the issue and the right people should be in the right place. I’m not talking about administration, but the technical aspect of it.”

President of NAAPE, Capt. Isaac Balami, argued that the issue of inadequate manpower was not peculiar to Nigeria.

“Even America imports manpower because they don’t have enough and so it is not just Nigeria that is faced with this aviation challenge,” he said. culled from punch