Bi-Courtney urges FG to restructure aviation sector

Bi-CourtneyAviation Services Limited, operators of Murtala Muhammed Airport has urged the Federal Government to restructure the aviation industry to allow the private sector to lead and thereby attract massive investment. Pledging to continue to make the nation proud, Bi-Courtney in a statement yesterday said: “Across the world, airports are being privatized outright, or given out as concessions to private operators. If Britain can concession Gatwick Airport terminal to a Nigerian, Adebayo Ogunlesi, what more do we have to say? What the industry needs desperately is a thorough liberalization and overhaul of the regulatory agencies to make them more efficient and more professional so as to be able to stamp out corruption. “The reforms at the seaports, though incomplete, provide a precedent, just as the success of the telecommunications sector liberalisation programme has delivered 110 million telephone lines, created hundreds of thousands of jobs and drawn in millions of dollars in foreign direct investment in 12 years. This demonstrates the enormous power that can be unleashed by leaving critical sectors to private capital.” Bi-Courtney noted that it had spent over N2 billion upgrading its facilities in 2014, adding: “The MMA2 with about 4.5 million/annum passenger capacity and a land area of 20, 000m2, is the first BOT project in the area of infrastructure development in Nigeria that has been completed successfully by a Nigerian company.”