Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor
The Federal Government has announced the discovery of aviation fuel suppliers that are illegally operating at Nigerian airports.
Capt. Musa Nuhu, Director General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), disclosed this in a meeting with aviation correspondents in Lagos on Thursday.
This comes after a series of small setbacks in the industry, including an investigative report of contaminated fuel and the recently crashed small plane in Ikeja, Lagos.
Nuhu added that the illegality was discovered during a meeting with the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
The NCAA Boss stated that Authority will check the activities of unapproved aviation fuel marketers that are involved in the supply of contaminated Jet-A1 to unsuspecting airlines, reacting to four incidents of contaminated Jet-A1 fuel, where water was discovered in commercial aircraft tanks.
He said that during the investigation, it was discovered that some unapproved aviation fuel marketers found their way into the airports where they supplied the commodity to unsuspecting airlines.
According to him, the investigation as carried out alongside NUPRC, stating that the Authority has a list of approved aviation fuel companies by DPR but discovered that some suppliers currently operating at the airports were not on the list.
In his own words, “investigation is ongoing, we are doing this in collaboration with DPR and we have got the list of all companies approved by the DPR. We found out that some were not approved, we will write Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) about this to ensure they withdraw their services until they meet all requirements.”