The debate over Nigeria’s 5% Ticket Sales Charge and Cargo Sales Charge is being framed as a fight to protect safety, but a closer look at who actually delivers flight safety in real time shows the argument does not hold.
Nigeria’s representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council, Engr. Mahmoud Ben Tukur’s submission before the House insists that passenger charges must only go to agencies that provide direct services to passengers, citing ICAO Doc 9082 and the principle of cost-related charges. The logic sounds neat on paper until you test it against what happens in the sky.
Passengers do not fly on regulation. They fly on communication, navigation, surveillance and air traffic control. Every aircraft that departs, climbs, cruises and lands in Nigerian airspace depends first on NAMA. From the moment a pilot contacts tower to the final approach, it is NAMA’s CNS infrastructure, radar, VHF, satellite navigation and air traffic controllers that keep aircraft separated and safe.
That is the direct service. That is the cost.
To argue that allocating part of the passenger charge to NAMA violates ICAO cost-recovery principles is to ignore what ICAO Doc 9082 actually seeks to do: recover the full operational, maintenance and capital costs of providing aviation facilities.
NAMA’s facilities are those facilities. The Doppler VORs in remote locations, the ILS calibrations, the ADS-B rollout, the generator fuel that must run 24 hours because aircraft do not stop when there is no power, the flight inspection aircraft, the Eurocat upgrades.
These are not administrative costs. These are the costs of keeping airplanes apart and getting them down safely. If anything, asking NAMA to run that architecture on 22% while the regulator that does not provide navigation services takes 65% is the real inconsistency with cost-related charging.
The safety argument is also being stood on its head. The submission warns that reducing NCAA’s share will undermine oversight, recruitment and ICAO compliance. But safety oversight without functional navigation infrastructure is oversight of an empty sky. You cannot inspect what you cannot guide. You cannot certify airlines that cannot be tracked.
NAMA is not asking to defund the regulator. It is asking for a formula that reflects workload and responsibility. When the 30% allocation was first created it was called a 5-year support. That was years ago. Traffic has doubled, technology has changed, and NAMA’s mandate has expanded into performance-based navigation, multilateration in the Gulf of Guinea and continuous surveillance. Yet its share was cut to 22% through amended Acts while its costs ballooned. That is not sustainability. That is slow strangulation.
The reference to the Seventh ICAO Worldwide Air Transport Conference on sustainable funding for Civil Aviation Authorities is instructive, but incomplete. Sustainable funding must go to the agency that bears the sustainable cost.
Nigeria has been praised for an independent regulator, and that independence should be protected. But independence cannot mean taking the lion’s share of user charges while another agency provides the service those users pay for.
This is not about pitting agencies against each other. It is about equity. The NCAA regulates. NAMA operates. Both are critical. But when a passenger buys a ticket, the charge is for the journey, and the journey is made possible by NAMA’s systems. To keep 65% with the regulator and leave 22% with the operator is to fund the rulebook and starve the runway.
Lawmakers are right to review the formula and to push for automation through the CBN to block leakages. They should go further and align the distribution with reality. A 56% allocation to NAMA is not a grab. It is a correction. It puts money where the risk is, where the equipment is, where the controllers are, and where the cost of safety is paid every day.
Preserving a strong regulator matters. But preserving a functional airspace matters more. Without NAMA’s communication, navigation and surveillance, there is no aviation to regulate.
This is why the House must reject the notion that this is only about protecting NCAA’s autonomy and instead vote for a revenue formula that funds the actual service passengers benefit from.
Gboyega Adeoye is a veteran aviation journalist, publisher, The Kiriji Times and co-organiser, Nigeria Aviation Hall of Fame
