There is nothing to concession at airports-Unions

Aviation unions in the country have said there is nothing to concession in airport terminals across the country but to continue with the necessary maintenance of facilities.

Addressing workers of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria FAAN at the freedom square at the headquarters in Lagos, the representative of Unions made of NUATE, ATSSSAN, ANAP and NUP, Comrade Ocheme Abah, and general secretary of NUATE said the Outline Business Case OBC revealed that promoters of the concession were unsure of the concept to be adopted between build operate and transfer and rehabilitate operate and transfer.

Abah noted that there where a lot of jiggling of facts in the OBC adding that most of the claims were outrightly false with clear attempts to undervalue the concession assets while they made claims to overvalue expected investments of prospective concessionaires

He said this manipulation on the part of OBC has created a serious credibility deficit for the concession exercise

According to the unions, the economics of the concession do not add up at all saying that the profit sharing ratio is proposed to be 60:40 in favour of the concessionaire.

“The disadvantaged FAAN is made to bear the repayment of the $1billion loan utilized to build same terminals, continue to pay emoluments of its staff and pensioners, return 25 per cent of its IGR to the FGN under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and maintain the remaining eighteen airports in Nigeria. Unless through some abracadabra, there exists no possibility of FAAN meeting even a quarter of the above enumerated obligations under this obnoxious sharing formula.”

They stated that the basis of granting the concessionaire the lion share of 60 per cent of the profit remains opaque when as there was no real financial investment to be made sounds to them like Take-Operate-and Transfer (TOT) which is simply reaping without sowing.
They claimed that FAAN has too many unresolved litigations bothering on the concession and the plethora of unattended outstanding labour issues is well documented and within public view.