Aviation workers protest planned concession of four major airports

Aviation workers protested on Monday in Lagos, Ibadan and Kano against the planned concession of four international airports by the Federal Government.

The government has slated these four airports for concession: Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja; the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos; the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, Rivers State and the Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano.

As early as 6 a.m, the protesters shut down all offices at the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) in Lagos.

Security officers at the gates into the FAAN headquarters and other offices were excused by the union members who padlocked the entry and exit gates.

Thereafter, leaders of the Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP), National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, (ATSSSAN) and the National Union of Pensioners (NUP) addressed their members on the reason for the action.

The FAAN workers displayed placards with various inscriptions, such as: “Airports concession is a crime against Nigerians”; “Selective concessions ploy to destroy FAAN”; “FAAN workers have been patient enough, job losses loom in the aviation industry.”

In Ibadan, placard-carrying workers held a peaceful march on major streets of the city, saying they were not carried along in whatever government wanted to do about the concession.

ATSSSAN Chairman Oyewole Olayade said: “The Federal Government claimed that the airports are underdeveloped and cannot continue to fund them again.

“Government now believes that it should invite private investors to come forward to invest so that there will be funds to develop the facilities.

“Our stand has always been transparency. These four major airports generate the bulk of our revenues.”

Read Also: Enugu Airport reopens SundayFAAN workers in Kano carried anti-concession placards during their protest at the Amina Kano Airport.

The state’s NUATE Chairman Mohammed Zakaria said: “We want to continue as FAAN. Government owns everything, but we are saying no to concession.”

Also, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday kicked against Federal Government’s plan to concession four of the nation’s major airports.

Labour’s opposition to the plan came as aviation workers protested at Ibadan, Lagos and Kano airports to show their opposition against the planned concession.

NLC, in a statement by its President, Ayuba Wabba, said: “It is important to note that when our airports, especially the ones earmarked for concession were eyesore and dilapidation, private capital was not injected towards their rehabilitation.

“It would be a grand insult to the collective intelligence of the Nigerian public for the Federal Government to invest a lot of public funds into the reconstruction and rehabilitation of our airports and then hand them over to private sector players for profit maximisation and at the expense of the tax-paying public. This is unjust. It is immoral. This cannot stand.

“Apart from the haemorrhage to government revenue this concession portends, Nigerian workers are concerned about the security of their jobs. Our experience in the past has been that of massive layoff of workers once private sector players get the concession on national assets.

“The reason is very overt – profit maximisation – as very few workers would be engaged as slaves to do the work that many workers would ordinarily be required to do. Organised Labour would resist this…”