FG urged to partner private airlines to establish MRO in Nigeria

LAGOS—Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Toucan Aviation Support Services, Achuzie Ezenagu, has called on the federal government to partner with private airline operators to establish a major Maintenance, Overhaul and Repair, MRO, in the country to serve as catalyst to the nation’s aviation development.

Ezenagu who spoke at the just concluded Nigerian Business Aviation Conference, in Lagos, said MRO facility in Nigeria would save the country huge financial resources, help to train and employ indigenous aircraft engineers, make aircraft checks cost effective for Nigerian airlines and reinforce Nigeria as a hub in West Africa. According to him, “MRO is costly to set up in Nigeria because of the heavy levies from government, but this can be done. In our own company we operate Embraer aircraft and we have standby engineers for line maintenance for the planes. We don’t have the facilities to get the checks done here but government can partner with the private sector to establish a major MRO in the country.” Similarly, former Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority ,NCAA, Dr Harold Demuren, said Nigeria was overripe to have such facility and noted that if 40 per cent of the funds spent on the re-modelling of airport facilities in the last few years were deployed by government to establish the facility, it would have been invaluable for the development of aviation in the country. Demuren noted that Nigeria losses huge resources maintaining its aircraft overseas and besides the economic loss, Nigerian trained aircraft engineers cannot secure jobs locally and for Nigeria to become the West African hub, it must have the MRO facility.

Source: Vanguard