LAGOS – The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has invested over N36 billion and $12.9 million in acquisition of air safety equipment across stations and airports in Nigeria in recent times, Mr. Lawrence Pwajok, its Acting Managing Director has said.
Pwajok also said that in a bid to address the challenge of ageing workforce in the system, the management would engage at least 100 Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) to replace those that would be retiring from the agency soon.
Pwajok said these over the weekend in Lagos during an interaction with aviation journalists.
According to Pwajok, NAMA received approvals for several projects from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in recent years, which were primarily aimed at improving efficiency, safety and security of air and land border areas.
He mentioned some of the projects to include safe tower, which gulped N13 billion, upgrade of the Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON), N23 billion and multilateration at $12.9 million.
Pwajok emphasized the safe tower project was for the upgrade of Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt facilities.
For the TRACON project upgrade, Pwajok said it entails software and hardware upgrade, training, provision of maintenance agreement for the nine radars for the entire country.
According to him, N17 billion of the N23 billion was for system upgrade, while the other N5 billion is for the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) system that connects the nine radar stations.
The third major project according to him was the multIlateration for the low flying helicopters in the Gulf of Guinea, which he put at $12.9 million as of the time the project was approved.
He said, “The public service is held in public and there is no information on spending that is intended to be kept in secret and all our projects have to get the Federal Executives Council (FEC) approvals and they are not secretive.
“The safe tower project is over N13 billion, which is for the upgrade of safe tower systems for Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt. This project includes Air Traffic Management Systems (ATMS), communication systems, surveillance components and aero metrological components to provide real time weather to the ATC in these four international airports. So, it is an all inclusive project, covering the entire requirements for the provision of airdrome and ground control at the four international airports.
“The project is ongoing and at the moment, they are doing installation of upgrade of hardware and software in Lagos. When they are done, they will move to Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt.
“The other project is the TRACON upgrade. It is a project that is worth N23 billion naira for software, hardware upgrade, training, provision of maintenance agreement for the nine radars that we have covering the entire country. N17 billion of that amount is for system upgrade, that is the radar itself, which we are upgrading to a top sky radar system from Euroca C. It is a state-of- the-art radar system and it is used in Europe and any other developed country.”
