SAHCOL to lose N480m on Abuja Airport closure, says management

Managing director, Skyway Aviation Handling Company Limited (SAHCOL) Mr. Rizwan Kadri says that the firm will lose at least N480 million, for the six-week period the Abuja Airport will be closed.

This avoidable loss is to come from the unplanned personnel costs and other logistics, which the closure would subject the cargo handling company to.

The chief executive officer said government officials did not carry all stakeholders along while planning the closure.

Kadri, who stated this in a phone chat with Ripples Nigeria on Saturday said, “Government is taking the right step as per the repair of the Abuja Airport, as it’s long overdue, however, it has gone about it in a wrong way as no stakeholder was carried along and that is why no foreign airline is flying into Kaduna.

“Not only us, many players in the industry will lose quite a lot of money owing to this closure. SAHCOL will need to shift manpower, equipment to Kaduna and we will continue to pay them salaries, if they stay in Abuja although not doing anything for six weeks. We hope it lasts just six weeks but the airlines plan a return after the six weeks.”

Read also: NNPC loses N12.5bn from products theft in Kaduna Refinery

He added that scarcity of dollar has continued to be a major constraint in the survival of the aviation sector .

“As it is known, the chunk of our revenue is from airlines, and if they pull out it dwindles our revenue,” he said.

He further stated that 2016 despite the inherent challenges was a fair year with regards to the handling company’s business but expects a better in 201

He disclosed that SAHCOL is currently indebted to more than N70 million as a result of the seizure of the Bells Helicopters, said to belong to the Rivers State Governmet.

He explained that the helicopters were in SAHCOL import warehouse at the airport for two years.

He added: “We have nothing to do with the helicopters. Our only connection with the helicopters is that the importers brought them into our warehouse as a company and that is our duty”.

It would be recalled that Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) ON January 27, 2017 announced the seizure of two Bell civil model Helicopters imported into the country, saying they belonged to unknown importers.

The two Helicopters were handed over to the Nigerian Air Force for failure of the unknown importers to produce end-user certificate from the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) in contravention of Section 36 ( 2) of the Customs and Excise Management Act .

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