Why we retained retired air traffic controllers – NAMA MD

Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Tayib Odunowo said the agency brought back retired air traffic controllers to address the manpower challenge.

Daily Trust reports that the airspace agency has been battling shortage of air traffic controllers who are the core technical personnel in the industry.

They are deployed to all the airports to man the airspace, controlling aircraft movement within the Nigerian airspace.
Speaking with newsmen on the sideline of the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents’ annual conference, the MD however said no fewer than 100 controllers have been recruited and are currently undergoing training.

He however stated that the technical personnel reabsorbed were those who “retired because of the years in service not age.”

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“These are people who still have a lot of fire power in them. So, we have brought them back. Secondly we have recruited 100 controllers now and we have started training. The challenge we are having is the space constraint in NCAT. So, we have had an MOU with the Rector of NCAT. So they are going to do a hybrid.

“Thirdly right now, we are working with the military. The military also has a school where they train controllers.

They expressed interest in helping us. And then lastly, we are bringing in an organisation to train our controllers to get all their classes of licenses in six months. So, we have a four-point approach that we are working on to quickly close the gap.”

He stated that the agency had deployed manpower to address communication issues in the airspace.

“So, the third one is that we are doing what is called an Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) automation process, which is the backbone of everything we are talking about,” he said.

The MD also disclosed that the ongoing multilateration project to tackle airspace complexity and provide for a dedicated communication, navigation and surveillance system is 90 percent completed.
According to him, the Niger Delta region is the busiest airspace in Nigeria.

“If you look at the proximity of all the airports, you have all these low flying objects. What NAMA is trying to do is to make sure that anything that flies in the Delta region is picked by the Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS).

“But right now, we intend to deploy Multilateration Technology (MLAT) all over Nigeria, starting from the Delta region.”