The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers — NAAPE — has issued a forceful public warning against a bill currently before the National Assembly that proposes a fundamental restructuring of how the five per cent Ticket Sales Charge is distributed among Nigeria's aviation agencies — describing the proposed changes as a policy decision with potentially serious implications for aviation safety, regulatory independence, and the country's international standing.
The bill, as described by NAAPE's NCAA Branch Chairman, Diepreye Saburugha, and Branch Secretary, Celestine Chukwu, would cut the NCAA's allocation from the TSC from 56 per cent to 40 per cent while raising the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency's share from 22 per cent to 40 per cent.
Why NAAPE Is Alarmed
NAAPE's concern centres on a fundamental principle of aviation regulation: that a safety regulator cannot effectively protect the public if it lacks the financial capacity to carry out rigorous oversight. The association invoked Nigeria's aviation history to make the point — citing the Bellview Airlines Flight 210 crash in 2005, which claimed 117 lives; the ADC Airlines Flight 53 crash, which claimed 96 lives; and the Dana Air Flight 992 crash in Lagos — as evidence of what happens when safety barriers fail and regulatory systems are undercapitalised.
"Nigerians may have gradually moved on from the dark years when devastating air crashes repeatedly shook the nation, but aviation safety systems are built on institutional memory," NAAPE said. "The rules, inspections, certifications and oversight systems that protect passengers today did not emerge by accident. They were strengthened through painful lessons, difficult reforms, and the collective determination that the country must never again allow avoidable safety failures to claim innocent lives."
The TSC Revenue Architecture
The five per cent Ticket Sales Charge is the primary revenue mechanism through which Nigeria's aviation agencies are funded. The NCAA's 56 per cent allocation funds the salaries, training, equipment, surveillance programmes, and international obligations of the country's primary aviation safety oversight body — the body that certifies aircraft, licences pilots, inspects airlines, and represents Nigeria at ICAO.
NAAPE noted that the real problem confronting the aviation sector is not how the existing TSC is shared, but the persistent backlog of unremitted charges owed by airlines — an issue the NCAA's No Pay No Service enforcement action in May 2026 brought into sharp relief. Cutting the NCAA's share while the underlying remittance problem remains unresolved would compound an already difficult financial situation for the regulator.
The NAMA Argument and Its Limits
Proponents of the bill argue that NAMA is underfunded relative to the services it delivers. NAAPE acknowledged NAMA's financial strain — particularly the ₦34.69 billion in outstanding receivables disclosed by its unions — but argued that the appropriate solution is recovery of outstanding debts and proper remittance of existing allocations, not a rebalancing of the TSC formula that would weaken the NCAA's financial foundation.
NAAPE called on the National Assembly to reject the bill in its current form, urging all aviation stakeholders to engage the legislative process to ensure that Nigeria's hard-won improvements in aviation safety — evidenced by the 91.45 per cent ICAO Effective Implementation score achieved in 2026 — are not compromised by changes to the regulatory funding architecture.
