Tinubu, Shettima, other VIPs to pay tollgate fees at airports

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Management, Festus Key among has disclosed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his deputy Kashim Shettima and other VIPs will henceforth pay toll gates fee at all national airports.

“No more exemption. When we came to the office, we met a tradition on the ground where at the end of the year, all manners of VIPs would approach us for what they call complimentary e-tags or complimentary stickers. Whereby you see them coming into our airports nationwide. They don’t pay the access fees.

Read also

Listen and download Nigeria Before 1999 by Living Soul

7 REASONS WHY MEN WILL ALWAYS ASK YOU FOR SEX

Ads

“They don’t pay for parking, they don’t pay for essential services at airports, and they are VIPs. And I told myself on my team, I said not under my watch. It will not happen. If this tradition has been existing for years, I will not allow it to happen. Because it is inconceivable that in our country it is the VIPs that don’t pay for services but it is the poor men that pay for services.

The VIPs were supposed to have money to pay for services, but they compel poor men to pay for services and I said no. So I got my team together, I said we need the backing of the Council to compel everybody. In fact, guess what? Our memo says with the exception of the President and the Vice President and the President overruled me and said he and the Vice President would pay.

“Let me give you the shocking statistics. The negative figure that we get at the end of the day from the complimentary e-tags is 82% in the negative. In other words, where we are supposed to have a 100% contract the e-costs from these e-tags that we print, it is only 18% that we now end up selling. That is how bad it is, 18% and 82% of these e-tags are given out free of charge to VIPs. So imagine the loss in my sector and I ask myself which other sector will I go to that they give me anything free?

“I’ll give another example. In one of the access gates, based on the count of the barrier going up and down, we are supposed to be making N250 or N260 million from that get every month. That gate, because of exemptions, the return is less than N100 million every month. That also of course, breeds corruption too because now you cannot track, you cannot have the audit trail of those free tags that you now give to our people to give out to people.

“So it was approved that the SGF should send a system-wide circular to everybody. We are going to also write to everybody, be it in the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, or the military high command, they can buy for their personnel yearly and don’t have to pay for every time you pass. Buy the yearly tags for all your officers, you have the money to pay us, so that we can improve your services at the airport.

“We got approval for that as part of ICAO’s requirements in the sum of N4.2 billion and a fraction, inclusive of VAT, with a completion period of 12 months to supply and also to train the handlers of these equipment to handle them and remove disabled aircraft from our runways, he concluded.

Ads