The Federal Executive Council (FEC), yesterday, at the end of a two-day meeting, took some far-reaching decisions, including that the president, vice president, and other top government functionaries would start to pay access fees or the e-tag at all the 24 federal airports across the country.
The decision followed a revelation at the meeting that the federal government had been losing 82 per cent or about N10 billion revenue that ought to accrue from airport tollgates.
The council also approved a memorandum for the procurement of aircraft recovery equipment, designed to respond to occasions of breakdown of aircraft from the runways, as recently experienced in Lagos.
The aviation ministry received FEC’s approval for the procurement of equipment at the cost of N4.2 billion, expected to be completed within 12 months.
Other decisions taken at the FEC meeting included that the recent suspension of the controversial cybersecurity levy was done in order for the policy to be properly reviewed.
FEC approved an initiative aimed at transforming the country’s infrastructure and housing sector, and targeted N20 trillion pension fund for infrastructure development.
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In the same breath, FEC announced plans to streamline its visa regime so that applicants, who wanted to invest in Nigeria, could obtain visa within 48 hours.
FEC appealed to organised labour not to derail its transformation plan for the power sector, even as it promised to look into labour’s demand for reversal of the electricity tariff hike.
Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Management, Festus Keyamo, was the first to hint at some of FEC’s decisions, during the gathering presided by President Bola Tinubu at State House, Abuja.
Keyamo said when his ministry presented a memorandum detailing the financial loss from the exemptions, FEC approved that all exemptions for very important personalities (VIPs), with regard to payment for access into airports in the country, be cancelled.
He lamented that because of the exemption, which the VIPs had explored to escape paying what was due to government, the larger part of the actual projected revenue was lost.
The minister said the council mandated the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, to send out a service-wide circular, informing all concerned of the cancellation of the exemption, adding that his ministry would follow up on that circular with another memorandum.
Keyamo stated, “No more exemption. When we came to office, we met a tradition on the ground where at the end of the year, all manners of VIPs would approach us for what they call complimentary e-tags or complimentary stickers, whereby you see them coming into our airports nationwide. They don’t pay the access fees.
“They don’t pay for parking, they don’t pay for essential services at airports, and they are VIPs. And I told myself and my team, I said not under my watch. It will not happen.
“If this tradition has been existing for years, I will not allow it to happen, because it is inconceivable that in our country, it is the VIPs that don’t pay for services but it is the poor men that pay for services.
“The VIPs were supposed to have money to pay for services, but they compel poor men to pay for services and I said no. So, I got my team together, I said we need the backing of Council to compel everybody.
“In fact, guess what? Our memo says with the exception of the president and the vice president, and the president overruled me and said he and the vice president will pay, he said everybody.”
The minister added, “Let me give you the shocking statistics. The negative figure that we get at the end of the day from the complimentary e-tags is 82 per cent in the negative. In other words, where we are supposed to have a 100 per cent contract, the e-costs from these e-tags that we print, it is only 18 per cent that we now end up selling.
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“That is how bad it is. Eighteen per cent and 82 per cent of these e-tags are given out free of charge to VIPs. So, imagine the loss at my sector and I ask myself, which other sector will I go to that they give me anything free?”
Keyamo also said, “I’ll give another example. In one of the access gates, based on the count of the barrier going up and down, we are supposed to be making N250 million or N260 million from that gate every month.
“That gate, because of exemptions, the return is less than N100 million every month. That also, of course, breeds corruption because now you cannot track, you cannot have the audit trail of those free tags that you now give to our people to give out to people.
“So, it was approved that the SGF should send a system-wide circular to everybody. We are going to also write to everybody, be it in the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, the military high command.
“They can buy for their personnel yearly. You don’t have to pay every time you pass. Buy the yearly tags for all your officers. You have the money, pay us, so that we can improve services at the airport.”
On the approval for the procurement of aircraft recovery equipment, Keyamo said, “We got approval for that as part of ICAO’s requirements in the sum of N4.2 billion and a fraction, inclusive of VAT, with a completion period of 12 months to supply and also to train the handlers of these equipment to handle them and remove disabled aircraft from our runways.”
