Aviation fuel scarcity: It is unjustifiable for Nigeria not to have working refineries — NANTA President

Mrs. Susan Akporiaye is the President, National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA). In this interview with  Matthew Denis, she speaks on issues bordering on the scarcity of Aviation Fuel, Government regulations and their contributions to economic growth of Nigeria. According to her, it is saddening and unjustifiable that Nigeria has no working refineries. Excerpts:

Airline Operators have been on loggerheads with the Government concerning the Jet A1 scarcity, thereby effecting a 100 percent increment on airfares. Although, the Government has approved the importation of the aviation fuel by airliners and pegged the price at N500 per litre. What is your take on this development?

It is actually a very sad situation that we found ourselves in it. It’s a situation we could have avoided if we had done the right thing from the beginning. For instance, the Government has no reason why we don’t have a refinery that can refine our crude oil. What is there is not enough and can’t go anywhere, so it’s something that we should have done long time ago but we failed and it has left us where we are. I feel for the airlines because it’s not their fault. The Jet A1 perlite rose from N250 to almost N700; so even the 100 percent increment is not enough – they can’t still break even with it. So, there are threats that they might even increase further. They are business people; it’s not Government airlines. So, they have to make money. It’s definitely going to affect the industry. We heard of their threat to shut down operations. If Government should allow that to happen; that means it’s our own COVID-19 because it’s not the whole world anymore but a Nigerian thing.  But we all know it’s because we don’t have refineries to refine our crude and this scarcity you are seeing is because of the Russia-Ukraine war. This is where we take our crude to refine and bring back again into the Country. It’s not available again. Ukraine offers the lowest cost for countries to come and refine their crude. Other countries are very expensive; so, we have to explore other countries with higher cost. So by the time the Jet A1 is landing in Nigeria, it will be over N400. It’s not even possible for the airlines to maintain the present price. It’s hard reality we are facing and I cannot blame the airlines but I’ll blame the Government because they need to have done the right thing. It’s not rocket science to make the refineries work. Dangote is building the largest refinery in the world. So, hopefully he will come and save the Government. It will be able to take care of Nigeria as a country and enough to export. Since the Government has failed, let a businessman come and save us from this crisis because when you have a country that depends on another country, you’re in trouble. If anything happens to that country, you too will almost be like you’re in war even though there’s no war.  At present, no fuel and no electricity supply and you even need this fuel for your generator to give yourself light. So, it’s like we’re in a war even though we’re technically not in war. However, they had a stakeholders meeting and I learnt they have pegged the price of the aviation fuel at N500, and with this, I think the plan to shut down operations will be reversed. Also granting them license to import Jet A1 is a welcome development.

Air transport is costly and perceived to be patronised by the rich in the country. Do you think Government should partner the airlines by subsidising the airfares to capture more Nigerians? 

Unfortunately, the aviation sector is run more by the private people globally. So, the issue of subsidy doesn’t come in here because it’s not a government thing. Apart from Ministry of Aviation, what else does Government do in aviation? They are just for regulations, policy making and infrastructural development of the airports. Air travels all-over the world are always the most expensive and we’re not exceptional. The reason why the citizens of other countries are not feeling it or complaining is because they have other effective means of transportation. So, there are options, but for our own, we don’t have options, thereby making the air travels very obvious that the price is high. Like you check Europe for instance, they have trains, seas and good roads network than our own. So it’s still an option; if our train transport covers the major cities in Nigeria, this problem of aviation fuel wouldn’t have bothered anybody. Now, we are all talking about it because that’s the only convenient means of transportation in the country. The train is just Lagos – Ibadan, Abuja to Kaduna: and Kogi to Warri which is not enough to substitute air travel so they air travel is still vibrant for us and the most convenient. Where you will travel 45 minutes by air, you will do 1hour 30minutes by train and perhaps 5 hours by road. It is just it’s more painful to us because our other means of transport haven’t been properly developed. At least, if we have trains connecting major cities like Portharcourt to Lagos, Lagos to Kano, Abuja to Uyo, Warri to Maiduguri, all these threats from airlines wouldn’t have come. So, if they are threatening to shut down, Nigerians will tell them shut down now, we have options to carry-on our businesses: But it’s affecting everybody as the only comfortable means of travelling. Government can only subsidise the aviation sector when there’s a national barrier and it’s facing bankruptcy then the government can come in to inject funds to stabilise the national carrier.

What are some of your achievements and contributions to the Economic growth in Nigeria?

On our contributions, NANTA has done so much in terms of creating employment opportunities for the teeming Nigerians. In fact, we have created about 125,000 jobs across the country. So, already in terms of employment, we’re there because every travel agency has an average of six staff. And we also have our members that have staff even more than the banks, running in hundreds and over 3,000 travel agencies in the country. We employ some of our staff from NYSC direct as they are finishing their national youth service corp (NYSC), and some of them do their youths service with travel agencies and they are being employed immediately. I do that and most of my staff are corpers. They came to serve here and are employed immediately after their service. We’re contributing in terms of unemployment, assisting the Government in that and of course in revenue generation. In terms of travel and tourism, we contribute about 2.5 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the economy of the country.  We create revenue to Government in terms of taxes we pay and the passengers we bring to fly. Because if people don’t fly, the Government will not get taxes. Anybody that buys ticket, you pay tax on it which is revenue to the Government and that cannot be questioned. In terms of our teamwork activities, as the captain steering the ship, we came in during the pandemic period. We were not deterred, but determined on some things that we’re going to do and we have achieved almost all of them. When everybody was at home during the lockdown, we were using zoom to conduct meetings and trainings, cutting costs of traveling here and there. We were able to inaugurate in that 2020 and established a training arm of NANTA. Training and capacity building are important because you know you cannot take away training as a professional.  Professionalism is not taking one training or that, but a continuous certification. The training never ends, but it’s always equipping yourself and getting the knowledge. We had organised two training successfully via zoom in that 2020 in conjunction with the International Air Transport Association (IATA). So our training is not just done, but it’s IATA Certified. The certificate we issue carries NANTA  stamp and IATA certified which you can take to anywhere in the world to get a job without rancour. And of course, there were lots of engagements with the airlines, financial houses, management companies inviting them to give a talk to our members, preparing them for life after the COVID-19. Another thing we have achieved is the bond of unity in the association. Just like what is happening in the country now, segregation is on the increase. It wasn’t  that way before. Things are deteriorating, there’s so much segregation, and we wanted to put a stop to it in our association because we have five zones. We have Lagos standing alone because of the size; we have Western zone with headquarters in Ibadan;  Abuja and the Middlebelt; Northern zone; the Eastern zone comparing the SouthEast and SouthSouth. And we started experiencing this issue of you Lagos people, you Abuja people and we said No! We wanted one NANTA and we have been able to achieve that, bringing back the unity of purpose that we share, reminding ourselves that we are one NANTA like one Nigeria. The evidence of this unity is our Annual General Meeting (AGM) coming up in Kano. This has actually proven to me that I have been able to achieve that unity. Everybody is excited and looking forth to the AGM in Kano. We’re also improving our relationship with our regulators to an extent that we’re working with them. We don’t have a bill but our regulators have asked us to put it in writing how they want us to be regulated, so that they can infuse it into their own bill to become a law. We are building a better relationship with IATA on daily basis. Our two years is coming to an end this March, which is the aim of the AGM in Kano; to elect new executives. I’m going in for the president slot again to improve on what we have built. In driving this unity, we’re going to launch a jingle to create awareness on our activities in the media. We’re going to be big and strong on awareness in this second tenure.

The issue of quackery and fraudulent Air travel agencies is becoming alarming in the country. What role is NANTA playing in collaboration with security agencies to curb this menace in the Aviation Sector?

Whether anybody believes it or not, this narration that travel Agencies are quacks bothers us more than anybody, because if you tell anybody I’m a travel agent, they will say you are 419. So it’s even more affecting us as professionals. So, our next tenure, we’re really going to focus on awareness. We have actually found out that the reasons why innocent people fall victim to the hands of these miscreants is because they don’t know the indices – the signs to look out for in identifying a professional travel agency and a quack. By the time some of these cases get to us, we start by telling them they should have known this person is a quack because of this and that. So, we’re going to be educating the public to know that travel Agencies are not visa officers. We don’t own visa or tickets, but sell on behalf of the airlines just like house agents do. So, if somebody comes and tell you to bring your passport and money and I’ll bring your visa, beware as sign number one. Many people come to NANTA and report is always on visa issue and we don’t take up such cases because we’re not visa officers. Let me now put a balance to it, we can do visa advisory because it’s our industry and we know what the Embassy wants and don’t. So, what we do is visa advisory. For instance, you want to do a UK Visa, I will sit you down and ask you questions on the purpose of your travels, your jobs and finances, then we can guide you through the process because people have challenges in filling forms. I’m sure you are aware recently when the US embassy said people shouldn’t patronise the people at the car park while filling their visa and that has been resolved because we wrote to the embassy and they have invited us for a meeting which we have educated them. In fact, the truth is that most of Nigerians need assistance because you can’t say they shouldn’t use the travel agencies when they want to travel, because some of them don’t even understand those questions. And in any visa process, filling of your form has already given you 50 percent guarantee of that visa. So, a lot of people are being rejected right in the process of filling the forms. Because if you don’t fill the form correctly, your chance of getting that visa will be difficult and most people don’t understand this phenomenon. So, that is where we come in to advise you on filling of the forms, aside electronic visa. We can do electronic visa, for instance the visa of United Arab Emirates (UAE) is electronic. They license travel Agencies to do it. So, if I do Electronic Visa for people, I’m not going against the jurisdiction because we will be licensed to do it. Another example is Turkish Visa, in which we can do but it has conditions attached to it. There was a case that somebody paid N700,000 for Turkish Visa and it’s electronic visa which the person did for one month travel only. So, this is part of the enlightenment on which we will guide travellers. Kenya visa too is electronic, we can do that. But these Electionic Visa is for tourism and usually for one month for people that want to go for holidays. This is against people telling you to bring N2.5million and bring your passport to do Canada visa for you. We take care of your travels needs from advisory role giving you 80percent chance and the remaining 20 percent will be on your documentation. There’s never a 100 percent chance of visa. We are regulated by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and IATA and we’re telling the public that before you do any business with travel agents, check if they are registered with the regulator. We have automated our system and always check our website if such agent is a registered NANTA Member.