President Muhammadu Buhari's long-awaited cabinet list, unveiled in November 2015, named Senator Hadi Sirika, a former lawmaker representing Katsina North, as Minister of State for Aviation. The appointment ended a months-long vacancy at the top of the ministry that had persisted since Osita Chidoka, who had held the post under the previous administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, left office earlier in the year, leaving the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to manage the sector's day-to-day affairs without a substantive political head through much of 2015.
Sirika, a trained commercial pilot, inherited an aviation industry that had seen incremental gains in safety oversight and some early infrastructure work, including the beginnings of new international terminal construction in Abuja, Kano, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Lagos, but that remained short of the comprehensive overhaul stakeholders had been demanding for years. Among the most pressing inherited problems was the deteriorating runway at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, which had already damaged the tyres of aircraft belonging to several foreign carriers on landing.
A Long Tenure Begins
The appointment placed Sirika at the head of a ministry that would remain under his direction for close to eight years, a rare span of continuity in a portfolio that had cycled through several ministers in the preceding decade. His arrival came in the same window as the unveiling of the Buhari administration's broader Aviation Road Map, positioning the new minister to be judged from the outset against an ambitious set of infrastructure, safety and industry-growth targets that the government had already committed itself to publicly.
Expectations Set Early
Industry stakeholders, including the Airline Operators of Nigeria and the aviation workers' unions, greeted the appointment cautiously, welcoming the end of the ministerial vacancy while making clear that the sector's underlying problems, from ageing airport infrastructure to the receivership troubles facing carriers such as Arik Air and Aero Contractors, would require sustained attention rather than a single roadmap announcement to resolve.