By Chuks Okoh
The Chairman, House Committee On Aviation Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha has said that the legislators would be forced to conduct a public hearing on the relationship between First Bank of Nigeria Plc and the aviation agencies.
Speaking in Lagos after she and members of her committee inspected ongoing projects at the general aviation terminal and international wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, Onyejeocha said the committee had mandated the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), to return the controversial bulletproof cars, under-written by FBN to its supplier.
“”Those bulletproof cars should be returned to the suppliers and the money recovered. We will call public hearing on the matter if they fail to return the cars. We recommended that further payment on the purchase of the cars-bought for N255 million- should be discontinued and the cars returned to where they were bought or whoever facilitated the purchase,” she said.
She said the house was not satisfied with the relationship between First Bank that facilitated the purchase of the cars and aviation agencies.
Thereafter, she described as fraudulent the agreement on automation between the bank and Avitech on the one hand and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) on the other saying the bank should not be in charge of automation.
She said the deal between the FBN and Avitech and the aviation agencies “is worse than what transpired during the FAAN-Maevis agreement and should not be allowed to continue as it will seem that FBN is reaping while FAAN is losing money.”
Avitech is a software provided by FBN for the aviation agencies including the NCAA, FAAN and Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) for the automation and revenue collection. But the committee insisted that the agencies could collect the revenue by themselves.
Before the coming of Avitech, all the revenues accruing to the parastatals were collected manually which resulted in huge losses through leakages inherent in the manual procedure.
Avitech is a single payment platform providing streamlined revenue collection and workflow process between the government, airlines, aviation personnel and air travelers collectively with the aim of reducing internal leakages and fraud relating to over invoicing and ghost vendors.
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