Chinedu Eze
The Category 3 Instrument Landing System (ILS) the federal government acquired at the sum of N7.58 billion and installed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja and the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos in 2019, has been abandoned and left to rot, THISDAY inquiry has revealed.
The N7.58 billion (N30.02 billion in 2026) spent on the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) project, was only for the first phase, as more money was planned to be spent on the second phase.
The federal government has also planned to install the vital equipment at other airports, including Kano, Katsina, Maiduguri and Sokoto.
Industry sources said the abandoned project is a good example of how government waste money generated from taxes.
It was learnt that after the installation, NAMA was unable to provide other requirements needed for the equipment to work, so the project was abandoned and Abuja and Lagos airports resorted to the use of Category 11 ILS, which is still in use today.
The purpose of the installation was to reduce flight delays and cancellation during harmattan season and to enable pilots to land at zero visibility.
Over the years, air travellers were stranded at airports because of dust haze occasioned by harmattan weather, which usually occur at the high Christmas holiday season in December and January when many Nigerians travel for festivities.
For Category 3 ILS to be functional, there are other navigational aids that must be installed along with it, which include the localizer that provides horizontal/lateral guidance to runway center-line to guide the pilot to land safely.
Also, for Category 3 ILS to work, there must be very high accuracy, integrity monitoring and dual transmitters and monitoring equipment and visual lighting aids because pilots may not see the runway until it is very late, seconds before the aircraft touches down on the runway.
All the accompanying equipment were not provided in addition to the fact that under the Category 3 ILS equipment, the airport must not experience power outage on the runway, a condition which the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) may not meet because it transits from the national grid to independent power plants and high-capacity generators.
It was after the installation of the equipment that government officials started giving excuses that other equipment must be installed for the Category 3 ILS to work and since then the project has been kept in abeyance.
In fact, insiders told THISDAY that there was no feasibility study and pre-qualification and planning process `because they just wanted to use the project to corner money, which was what they eventually did. Today, no one is charging anybody in court for using the project to corner government resources, since the equipment never worked for one day.
Aside the Category 3 ILS equipment that was literally used as conduit to funnel government funds, some critical projects in NAMA have not been completed for years. Some officials in the agency alleged lack of commitment by the management while the management is lamenting lack of funds.
In the area of communication, NAMA in the past 10 years has embarked on the automation of Aeronautical Information Service (AIS), which provides information necessary for the safety, regularity and efficiency of international air navigation.
The services provided by AIS are invaluable and include flight information service like the traffic information, meteorological information, information on runway state and other information useful for the safe and efficient conduct of flight. It is also the channel for dissemination of information on weather and weather report, among others.
Some years ago, hopes were raised that the project would be completed but it has not till today. In 2023, NAMA claimed it had put to an end the perennial problem of communication in Nigeria’s airspace as it had put things in place to complete the project.
The agency said it had to first provide electricity to power its communication facilities across the nation before completing the project.
The former Managing Director of NAMA, Mr. TayibOdunowo, said: “We started with the power audit. You know when you want to diagnose a problem you have to look at the symptoms before administering a drug. So much have been done in-house. We put a committee together made up of engineering, people that own communication and operations, which are the user department. So, they have identified key things, key deliverables that we have started working on in order to close that gap. One of them is power.
“Immediately, we rolled up solar powered transmitters, and this has helped in bridging the gap for our communications.”
But the latest update on the project is that it is yet to be completed. An official of the agency told THISDAY that the major challenge with the project was caused by those who started it. Without going into specifics, the official said that it was those who initially embarked on the project that were responsible for its non-completion.
However, some officials of NAMA attributed the non-completion to chronic funding shortages, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and logistical disruptions.
On Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON), THISDAY learnt that NAMA management has officially indicated that the facility has become obsolete and it is shopping for another radar system.
An insider told THISDAY: “TRACON is collapsing so they will buy a new one.”
Again, NAMA management has concluded plans to buy Indra radar Sistemas Radar Systems from Spain. It is produced by Spanish defense and information technology company. The company designs cutting-edge 3D Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) systems used widely across NATO and global airspace.
But some NAMA officials told THISDAY that TRACON can be modernised because of the way the system was built, adding that it is just that NAMA management is more disposed to acquiring new radar system.
“TRACON is collapsing; so, they want to buy a new system, but the truth is that TRACON was made scalable when it was procured; that means that you can keep upgrading it. You can keep upgrading the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system which is a software. So, you can keep upgrading the software,” the insider told THISDAY.
“To bring it up to the current technology in that area, it has to be modernised,” another insider told THISDAY.
The official also noted that there were also considerations that the equipment might be replaced, which would cost huge sum, but with modern system that will dovetail with the latest equipment used currently in different parts of the world.
Officials of NAMA are of the view that the agency might not be getting the money it ought to get to enable it complete on-going projects and upgrade existing ones.
Some believe the resources are there but the management is not getting its priority well. Two agency staff volunteered that in terms of staff welfare and training, the agency is doing well, but cannot say same when it comes to projects.