The House of Representatives Committee on Aviation on Wednesday urged the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to upgrade its airspace equipment to meet up with the international standard.
The Chairman of the committee, Mr Nnolim Nnaji, made the disclosure after the inspection of the agency’s facilities at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
Nnaji said the committee had noticed the manual operation of the TRACON and when the committee went to the control tower they saw the digital aspect of it.
He said the Managing Director of NAMA, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu had promised them that the TRACON system would be upgraded to conform with digital utilisation.
The chairman said there were NAMA facilities that had been included in the budget and the accelerated fund for the agency would be taken into consideration.
“It is highly commendable that will have such a facilities on ground and we believed that with government support those facilities would be upgraded.
“Other airports in the country need to be upgraded and not just Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt Airport alone,” he said.
Nnaji said that the committee had passed the budget of the agency and the agency was happy with it because it would improve on its operation.
He explained that the aviation industry was critical and there was the need to upgrade the facilities of the agency.
“We are looking at increasing the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and the BASA fund for the agency to access fund.
“This is because NAMA is critical to us and we are going to continue to supply the agency to access fund,” he said.
Nnaji said it had a bill before the House from Mr President on amendment of NAMA Act to conform with the modern standard and there will be a public hearing on it soon.
He said there were other issues that would be discussed with the agency management on the bill before we passed it.
Responding, Akinkuotu thanked the committee for its oversight function at the agency.
He said the agency would continue to collaborate with the National Assembly in ensuring its operations were improved.
