By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The Minister of Aviation Senator Hadi Sirika on Wednesday disclosed that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved two memoranda submitted to it by his ministry to award a multi-billion Naira contracts for Fire-Truck Maintenance, Refurbishment Center in Katsina state.
He also revealed that the Council has graciously given another approval for the establishment of a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility where aircrafts will be maintained in the country, a departure from the former where aircrafts are flown to Europe, America or the far East for maintenance purposes.
Sirika made these disclosures while briefing State House Correspondents after the weekly FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Council Chamber at Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Said he: “So, today (Wednesday) from Civil Aviation we had three memoranda. And one was stood down for us to re-work it for more clarity, and that is the memorandum on the establishment of Aviation Leasing Company”.
“Remember, in my brief, we said that the purpose of that company is to be able to afford or to give enterpreneurs in Civil Aviation the opportunity to be able to lease equipments and get funding that will be of benefit to them and facilitate their businesses”.
“So, the second memorandum is approval for the award of contracts for the establishment of Fire Truck Maintenance and Refurbishment Center in Katsina”.
“And this is a very critical procurement for us. It is to attend to all the issues we’re having with fire tenders all over the country. In the past, past governments used to ship this firefighting equipment back to Europe where they’re manufactured to get them refurbished and bring back at a cost; and of course, it takes time to do so, and export our labour on our foreign exchange”.
“So, the Buhari government decided that we should establish one and that center will cater for aviation firefighting equipment, including all other firefighting equipment around the country”.
“In fact, it’s not going to be limited to only firefighting, it will be for heavy duty vehicles that could be maintained and the internal purposes as they gain experience, we go into assembly of those trucks here in Nigeria, similar to what Volkswagen and Peugeot is doing, and eventually they start to manufacture our own”.
“So, the setup will be with the aim to achieve that but the first initial contract is to set it up in such a way that we’ll be doing maintenance on those equipment.
And the contract sum was N7,913,949,964″.
Speaking further the minister said that the second contract under that is the building itself, pointing out that: “The building of the Maintenance Center, which is Messrs Ingenious Nigeria Limited at the sum of 3,985,432,685”.
“And the other one is the civil works around it, which went to Messrs Glovesly Pro-Project, the cost of 1,120,640,154. 63”.
According to him: “This is within our own threshold as a ministry so it didn’t come to Council but the two came and they passed on the completion period with this procurement is 12 months”.
Sirika also said the second memorandum his ministry got approval for is the full business case, pointing out that this is now a roadmap item for the Ministry of Aviation.
“We seek to establish a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility where aircrafts will be maintained here in the country, and will be a departure from the former where aircrafts are flown to Europe, to America or to the far East for maintenance”.
“In this particular case, we will be doing the maintenance here when it’s established. There’s a lot of debates. People have said, we have Messrs Aero Contractors, we have Ariks have others that are having the MROs. Well, those MROs, Yes, but they are not to the size and to the level that we envisaged”.
“Those are doing small single aisle airplanes, but this one is going to go the whole hog; it’s going to be a full center for full ABC and D Checks on wide body multiple aisle, high capacity airplanes within the country”.
“This will stop us from exporting our labour, our foreign exchange and will transfer technology and then of course, begin the future to put together a manufactured certain parts of aircrafts and of course, aircraft itself”.
“So this business case is for 30 years and the company or the group that won the contract is Messrs AGW and they came in a consortium with NAYAK Aircraft Services and Messrs Glovesly Pro-Project Limited and they will be paying a fixed fee of sum of $30,000 in the first year, with annual escalation rate of 3% payable annually in advance and other fees that are variable”.
“0 to five years- 1%; 6-10 years 1.5%; 11-15 years, two and a half percent; 16-20 years, 5% and 21-30 year, 12 and half percent. The total amount of money they will pay the federal government is $185,750,000”.
“This is a fixed fee of about $1.4 million, variable fees of $51.1 million; land rent $6.82 million and corporate taxes $136 million”.
“So, this is the second memorandum that was passed today”, the Minister stated.
