Dispelling rumours regarding the issuance and renewal of the Air Operators’ Certificate (AOC), Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) has said that the process was void of graft.
Making this clarification was the Vice Chairman of the association, Allen Oyema, in response to claims made by Tropical Arctic Logistics (TAL), that the NCAA collected bribes to get the AOC.
Onyema, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Air Peace, said that the process of getting the AOC license was thorough.
He noted that the line for the application of the AOC was long, and the deficit in manpower affected the speed of the process.
Onyema said, “Something happened a month ago where an operator went to the press to allege that NCAA is corrupt and that you have to bribe your way to get AOC and because they didn’t pay bribe, they were not given AOC. We want to state here categorically that the AON has implicit confidence in the NCAA.
”The other CAAs of the world does not do what NCAA does for us in terms of safety oversight. But in Nigeria, we do not recognize our own. None of us has bribed anybody to get our AOC renewed.
“I have stayed for seven years in this business, some other members of the board of trustees of AON have stayed for about 25 years in this business and all of them have said that nothing like that has ever happened to them because even if the NCAA is not perfect, they are doing so much for the industry.
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“Your applications may be delayed, maybe because of lack of manpower because there is so much to be done. There are up to 23 airlines jostling to get AOC and you cannot create equal number of oversight inspectors to carry out their functions.
“But this does not mean that the NCAA is corrupt if you fail to get your AOC on time. Air Peace AOC expired before we were able to get another one and not because anyone demanded money from us and we never gave anyone money. The situation was created by covid because at that time, the NCAA like other CAAs in the world were working from home.
“We are calling on the international community to discountenance any statements that portrays our NCAA in a bad light. Most of us would want to apply for AOC today and get it tomorrow but one incident or accident may bring the entire industry down.
“We want to dissociate ourselves from whatever anyone must have said, it is not coming from us and it never came from us. We have confidence in the NCAA being led by Capt. Musa Nuhu.”
