With Tuesday’s interview by its spokesman, Yakubu Dati, on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria appears to have finally shot itself in the foot.
As a Nigerian, who is incurably optimistic about the country’s future, I have followed the running battle between FAAN and Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited with keen interest, because of its fundamental implication for the success of the Public Private Partnership development model, which the country desperately needs to reverse the infrastructure deficit and reposition the economy.
Before now, FAAN had somehow managed to steer public emotion to its own advantage by hinging the defence for all its actions, regardless of their arbitrariness, on the well-worn toga of promoting the common good.
But, during the interview, Dati successfully exposed FAAN for what it really is: an agency that has utmost contempt for the rule of law. It was actually very hard for me to believe that a man like Dati, who can be regarded as a somehow ranking official of the Federal Government, could posit that “Nigeria will not move forward if we reduce everything to legality.” What that mindset simply portends is that justice can be thrown to the dustbin as long as one has other forms of justification for his actions.
Dati’s position also revealed that FAAN does not see the promoters of Bi-Courtney and others like them as patriotic Nigerians, who took the risk of investing their hard-earned money in the Nigerian economy, especially in an uncharted course like concessions. They should, therefore, be celebrated as models and their investments given every ounce of protection provided by law. He actually referred to the Chairman of Bi-Courtney, Dr. Wale Babalakin, and his lieutenants, rather libellously, as ‘criminals’. This explains the desperate measures FAAN has been adopting in its bid to destroy Bi-Courtney’s and other similar investments in the aviation sector.
The FAAN spokesman also suggested, rather disingenuously, that the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two (MMA2) concession agreement with Bi-Courtney was slanted in the company’s favour. Even if that were to be so, does it give FAAN the right to wilfully and continuously disregard the letters of the agreement? What we do know, however, from available facts is that Babalakin’s company was not even the preferred bidder for the airport project. Rather, it was another company, Royal Sanderton, that got this honour. Bi-Courtney, which was the reserved bidder, was only invited to take over after Royal Sanderton could not deliver.
Something else I found interesting in the interview was the part where he tried to underscore the extent to which the concession agreement was skewed in Bi-Courtney’s favour, by affirming that the agreement specifically forbids the agency from building any other local terminal in Lagos State during the tenure of the concession. He, however, did not say why FAAN still went ahead to redevelop the General Aviation Terminal into an alternative local terminal next door to MMA2, despite this unambiguous clause in the agreement and several court rulings that did not only bar the agency from such an action but also ordered the handing over of GAT to Bi-Courtney.
Before I conclude, last week’s celebrated ruling by a Federal High Court in Lagos, which set aside the purported termination of the contractual agreement between FAAN and Maevis Nigeria Limited and also awarded N5bn damage to the company, bears commenting on.
It was another in the series of judgments delivered against the agency but which it chose not to abide by. And, as in the past instances, the latest victory of this pioneering indigenous company will, in the end, be tantamount to a mere academic exercise, which FAAN, with the active backing of the Federal Government (represented by the Ministry of Aviation), will not obey.
For the records, FAAN had on October 31, 2007 entered into a 10-year concession agreement with Maevis to provide an integrated Airport Operations Management System for airports in the country. But it abruptly terminated the concession agreement with the company on May 23, 2011 after the latter had invested about N7bn in equipment and personnel in fulfilment of its own part of the agreement. FAAN, subsequently, handed over Maevis’ project to the multi-national Societe International Telecommunication Aeronautiques, which earlier bided for the same project and lost. Maevis then went to court and, as they say, the rest is history.
There is no single follower of aviation issues in Nigeria that will pretend not to know that the rule of law is currently on sabbatical in the aviation sector. In fact, FAAN’s disdain for the judiciary is remarkable. As of now, the sector is operating under an emergency rule with the attendant suspension of all the relevant constitutional considerations.
The most obvious implication of the foregoing is that the office of the Minister of Aviation appears to have been elevated above the laws of the land. Therefore, the minister now wields arbitrary powers, which the incumbent can deploy in any manner she deems appropriate without the remotest possibility of a backlash.
To be sure, FAAN has never missed a chance to put the judiciary in its place and also sound a note of warning to all those that still doubt the extent of the emergency powers it now commands. Another example of such is the recent reports of how officials of the agency took the law into their hands by vandalising billboards erected in some parts of MMA2 by Bi-Courtney, in flagrant disregard of a restraining order of a Federal High Court, Ikeja.
Justice G.K. Olotu of the Federal High Court, Abuja Division put the issue in its clearest perspective, so far, in a widely reported judgment, which he delivered on July 3, 2012, in a case between Bi-Courtney and the Attorney-General of the Federation. In it, he stated, “In the case before the court, we have seen the gross, deliberate, calculated and heinous abuse of the rule of law, typified by the acts of the Federal Government of Nigeria, headed by the President, assisted by the minister charged with responsibilities for aviation matters in disobeying the judgment of the court delivered on 3rd March, 2009, i.e. approximately three years and three months ago, to deliver the immediate possession of the GAT to the plaintiffs (Bi-Courtney) as ordered by the court.
“As if that is not enough, the Federal Government and its agencies are presently engaged in the remodelling and, or, construction works to improve the terminal (GAT), contrary to and notwithstanding the agreement with the applicant and the judgment of the honourable court.”
•Tunde Oshodi, a media analyst, wrote from Lagos via oshoditunde@ymail.com