The National Union of Air Transport Employees and the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria stopped inbound and outgoing aircraft operations on Monday due to a strike, for which the Federal Government issued an apology to passengers on Wednesday.
Additionally, it threatened to execute the Civil Aviation Act’s provision (2022) banning future workers strikes that would interfere with flights.
“First, we apologise to our teeming passengers in this difficult moment. There are other ways of channeling issues when they arise but they are not permitted to go on strike because aviation is an essential service,” the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, told State House Correspondents after exiting the Council Chambers on Wednesday.
Local and international flights were halted on Monday for a number of hours as staff members of the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company went on warning strike over low pay.
The NAHCO management had already received a five-day strike notice from the disgruntled workers.
In addition to other things, they asked for a 100% wage increase as a result of the sector’s overall upward review of ground handling adjustments.
According to earlier reports, NAHCO management contacted the court to stop the impending strike.
Nevertheless, the workers ended their workday at midnight on Monday, leaving hundreds of passengers and airlines without a plan.
All foreign carriers with morning flights at Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed International Airport were impacted.
RwandAir, Qatar Airlines, and Royal Air Maroc are a few of them; some of them reroute flights to nearby nations or send passengers back to their starting point.
However, after a 15-hour wait, carriers like EgyptAir, Asky, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Ethiopia Airlines, and Air Peace started accepting international passenger check-in around 3 o’clock.
At the Presidential Villa, Sirika answered questions from State House Correspondents and referred to the strike as “wrong, inhumane, and against the law.”
To stop such interruptions, he committed to execute the pertinent provisions of the Civil Aviation Act 2022.
The law, in accordance with Sirika, forbids large-scale riots and strikes in the aviation industry.
“This is very important to the travelling public. First, we apologise to them; our teeming passengers in this difficult moment.
“Second, this will not happen in the future by the grace of God. And the reason is simple; aviation is an essential service. The Act has been assented to by Mr. President, so strikes and riots around our airports are prohibited by the laws of the land.
“Now that we have the Act in place and assented to by Mr President and passed by the National Assembly, we will deal with it according to the law,” he said.
Describing aviation as an essential service, the minister argued that the striking workers had other less-disruptive avenues to voice their grievances.
He said, “We will ensure no essential service is being disrupted by anybody no matter how aggrieved. There are other channels of channeling issues when they arise but they are not permitted to go on strike because aviation is an essential service and is by the law of the land now.
“I will give you an example, there was an airline that had to return to base because it couldn’t land. Imagine if there was a patient on that aircraft. Imagine somebody attending to a very serious issue or matter at hand or business or a student trying to catch up with an exam and then because of somebody who is aggrieved some other person will die.
“Government will no longer allow that. So it’s in the law of the land, check the Civil Aviation Act, it’s been assented to and it’s going to take place soon, in fact now, from today we will not allow that.
“As a government, our ears are always open, the government is open to listening to any grievances and there are procedures for dealing with this kind of grievances. They should please desist from this. It is wrong. It is inhumane. It is not allowed. It is not permitted and we will not be permitted any longer.”
