The House of Representatives Committee on Aviation has announced the exclusion of Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, (NAMA) from the 2023 budget allocation, and has asked the Minister of Aviation to give clarifications about it.
While describing NAMA as a critical safety arm of the aviation sector, Committee Chairman, Honourable Nnolim Nnaji, said that it should not be ignored. He said this during the committee’s 2023 budget defence meeting with the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika. The Chairman’s remarks was brought about by the omission of the agency in the 2023 appropriation Bill, which according to him, will be corrected.
He then stressed the need for the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika to give clarification on why NAMA was excluded in the 2023 Federal budget even though his Committee was already in talks on the issue with Senate committee counterpart to ensure that the anomaly was rectified during the appropriation process.
Nnaji noted that the consistent security challenges have put a lot of pressure on the infrastructures available in the industry and as such the country can not afford to neglect the needs of a safety agency like NAMA. Hence the need for the inclusion of the agency in the budget.
The committee chairman also disclosed that the committee will examine the performance of the Ministry’s budget from 2020 to 2022 extensively because some of the projects had been on-going since 2020. He submitted that the committee expected that the current budget performance report will comprise the full implementation details of the previous two budgets.
