Brain Drain Heavily Affecting Nigeria’s Aviation Sector – Capt Alex Badeh
The brain drain in the Nigerian aviation sector has impacted the industry negatively as over 80 percent of pilots and maintenance engineers have left the country for greener pastures abroad.
The brain drain in the Nigerian aviation sector has impacted the industry negatively as over 80 percent of pilots and maintenance engineers have left the country for greener pastures abroad.
Managing Director of the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau, NSIB, Capt Alex Badeh Jr, spoke in an interview on Channels Television on the Sunrise Daily programme.
Badeh admitted that the aviation sector was hugely affected by the migration of professionals in a trend known as Japa in the country.
Answering a question on the extent migration (japa) has impacted the aviation industry, Badeh said, ""Oh yes! Heavily! Heavily! Seriously, about 80% of people I start flying with here in Nigeria have left the country. I left the country too, but I returned back (re-japad back)'to Nigeria."
Excerpts:
As somebody who investigates all of air incidents, is the airspace in Nigeria safe?
Ans: Yes, I can confidently say that airspace is safe.
You feel it is safe?
Yes, it’s safe. I can see how it could be disconcerting with the increase in optic incidents and unfortunately it just so happened that between December and now there’s just been a rash of crashes. You know when it rains it pours as they say but I’m still confident that aviation and our airspace in Nigeria by and large is fairly safe. There’s been no major loss of life baring the helicopter crash in Bonny last year. We aim for zero fatalities, or we aim to get to our destination safely but occasionally these things happen, I’m not going to sugarcoat it here and say there aren’t slight issues. There are issues here with human factors and all that but inherently our aviation industry is safe and aviation around the world by and large is safe.
So, what’s your assessment of safety or safe aviation sector? Is it because there are no incidents of casualties or fatalities or minimal casualties and fatalities or what exactly is the parameter to measure the safety of our airspace? How do you measure that as a professional?
Ans: Yes, I can confidently say that airspace is safe.
You feel it is safe?
Yes, it’s safe. I can see how it could be disconcerting with the increase in optic incidents and unfortunately it just so happened that between December and now there’s just been a rash of crashes. You know when it rains it pours as they say but I’m still confident that aviation and our airspace in Nigeria by and large is fairly safe. There’s been no major loss of life baring the helicopter crash in Bonny last year. We aim for zero fatalities, or we aim to get to our destination safely but occasionally these things happen, I’m not going to sugarcoat it here and say there aren’t slight issues. There are issues here with human factors and all that but inherently our aviation industry is safe and aviation around the world by and large is safe.
So, what’s your assessment of safety or safe aviation sector? Is it because there are no incidents of casualties or fatalities or minimal casualties and fatalities or what exactly is the parameter to measure the safety of our airspace? How do you measure that as a professional?
I would use statistics. Look at the number of people flying all around the world, of airplanes in the air at any given time and you correlate that with the amount of crashes or incidents or fatalities. Compared to the roads or maritime or even rail, air transportation is inherently safer because how many people do the trains carry in Nigeria vis-a-vis their accidents and incidents whereas with aviation, I mean airplanes, each airplane on average seats about 80 people and you have at least five between Abuja and Lagos any given hour, 80x5x500 in a day.
We’ve seen recent incidents in the sector. Do you think the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, is being proactive rather than reactive in ensuring that all of the mechanical audits are done before aircraft belonging to airlines operate in our airspace?
I think the NCAA is being a fairly proactive, they need to be, that’s their job as the regulator and they’ve been proactive over the years now. Of course, some things do slip through the cracks and there is a strain on the Nigerian aviation industry. Aviation is a very capital-intensive business and it’s dollar-denominated. Of course, you’ve seen the economy in Nigeria and we’re naira-denominated economy, we are a net importer of almost everything when it comes to aviation.
So, the operators pass through some strain but if you’ve been paying attention in the past year the minister of aviation and aerospace development has been a champion for the Nigerian aviation industry, and he’s struck some deals and made headway in providing more airplanes and parts to the Nigerian operators and we’re hoping this year, we will see new airplanes here, but like I said the regulators, the NCAA, they’re being very proactive. We encourage them to look into more airlines just to make sure we don’t experience more incidents this year.
Is Nigeria able to conduct some maintenance checks in-house?
Unfortunately, I can’t sit here and tell you we have enough capacity. We have some capacity but if you notice we do fly a lot of our airplanes out of certain checks. Of course, certain checks are being done in Nigeria but there is a brain drain as well. Again, the pay, most people go home, they have families to feed and bills to pay, so a lot of people I started flying with have left the country, a lot of maintenance people too have left the country.
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