Herbert Ijeoma Odika is a household name in the aviation industry in Nigeria. Readers delight and a consummate professional who has severally shared his wealth of knowledge through opinions in journals, organized conferences, lectures amongst others. As our Personality of the Week, he speaks on salient aviation matters, while offering suggestions on how to make the industry better as well, suggesting applicable and practical solutions to seeming protracted challenges faced by industry practitioners and the government of the day. His overriding desire and passion is to see the industry thrive for more benefit of all concerned. Here him:
Can we get to know you properly for the leading public?
My name Remain Herbert Ijeoma Odika. Born in the UK. My training in terms of career is aviation. I didn’t start in the aviation industry, I was a very strong marketer in the UK. I was into sales and marketing of different products and services. But my dad worked in the aviation industry and somehow convinced me to come back to Nigeria in 2006 to work with the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company. I was there for six years I left, went back to the UK to work again. Then the addiction started kicking in. That’s the thing with the aviation. Once you tasted it, you don’t go back. I started writing columns for The Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics, different business entities. I also started writing articles advising the government on so many things. Until 2019, I worked in another airport in the UK as a lecturer at Stansted Airport. Again in 2019, I was offered appointment by yet Nigeria Aviation Handling Company to return to Nigeria as the Chief Operating Officer to restructure the operations and for service excellence. Covid hit in 2020 and there was a lot of uncertainty, I went back to the UK after 19 months and went back to the airport again, went to work in Luton Airport, covering Europe. By 2023, I found myself back in Nigeria again, back in ground handling this time, not in the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company, but in the Skyway Aviation Handling Company where I am today as the Executive Director Operations; That’s a bit about me. I’m married, my wife is in the UK. We got married here at FAAN School, so 98% of our guests were FAAN staff. Everything about me revolves around aviation so that’s who Herbert is.
Basically, your career in aviation began in 2006?
Professionally, yes.
What areas would you like to see the aviation minister focus more attention to enhance practice in the industry?
I think, what I would say is that the clamour has always been that you need somebody who has a vision, experience to be the aviation minister and be able to run the affairs of the Aviation Ministry. I can say that, the current Aviation Minister has proven that the aviation industry is a regulated industry. Legal personalities deal with regulations, deal with statutes, deal with legal interpretation. For me, I feel he is focused on the areas he wants to improve the industry, and he’s pursuing them. It’s a question of starting a project and ensuring you see it to a fine conclusion. We can lay so many examples to being able to have the likes of my client, Air Peace, successfully getting into London, which has been an issue over the years. We have recently discussed about the issue of transiting from wet lease to dry lease, which would help airlines acquire more aircraft than what they were doing and going down the cash purchase but now with the dry lease whatever they spend they can use less money to acquire more aircraft which is a plus. The Minister has his plan and he’s working towards that. We’ve had a lot of ceremonies in the past. Let’s not forget that this is a global issue, airlines are struggling all over the world, it’s not a Nigerian thing. The industry is going through so much reforms in different areas, we are looking at infrastructure like information technology, changing a lot of things using different I.T. platforms to change our manual ways of doing things in the industry and Nigeria slowly but surely is gradually aligning. When you visit other African countries, you would understand that Nigeria is moving with the pace as far as Africa is concerned, we cant compare ourselves with Europe or the United States who have been in the industry for over a hundred years and have grown over the years; so I feel that he has his road map and is working on his road map, he cant achieve everything.
What can be done to make unviable airports attractive to domestic carriers to operate in?
My honest opinion is to advise the government to have a round table talk with operators to see whether they would be interested in some of the airports that do not yield as much revenue; I give you classic example, Ryan air in the U.K took over stansed airport built as an American base, the airport was dead for so many years until Ryan air sat with DFT and decided to come up with a deal to revive the airport and they were given some incentives to revive the airport and the rest is history today. My advice would be government call the operators together, they will be in the best position to say how they can revive airports that may not be as viable and make them viable. That would be the first port of call for me. So creation of incentives to entice airlines and other private investors to look at airports some airports can be flying clubs while they still have passenger operations, there could be other side attractions that will make the airports a bit more active because that’s what you want to see, an airport that is active and a lot of it is down to geographical locations, security issues around safety of passengers moving in and out of where the airport is located.
What can be done to ensure that airlines flying into the country goes out with something since we have a lot of things to export?
I think costs would have to be negotiated this is something I have discussed so many times. Incentives on landing rights, navigational rights for airlines that are happy to export especially Agro – products and all that as an incentive to encourage exports. But the first thing you need to look at also is what product can you export and make profit, that’s the most important question. Don’t forget that we have maritime to compete with, air transport deals with goods that need to get to its destination quick and are light because it is weight driven. So viability in terms of carrying exports depends on where the export is going to, how consistent is it, because when you are looking at export you have to look at consistency, you cant carry export for one day and stop, it has to be continuous. You also have to ensure that if its agro products that you are dealing with, the trainings starts with the farmers, from the farmers the training goes to the business people that patronize the farmers. From there in terms of packaging, it gets to the freight forwarders and then to the airlines before it is lifted. So there is a lot of restructuring that needs to take place in terms of our product type, understanding soils in different locations in Nigeria, understanding where the products will survive and a classic example is some of the yams you export from here do not last twenty four hours in cold weather, your money is gone. Test the products, take them there, watch the gestation, go to countries like Ghana and understand how the crop grows; we have pineapples in Nigeria, they are big but pineapples exported from Ghana are small size which are lighter, more attractive to sell because of space constraint in super markets out there, and other areas where the people pick these things up. I think the first thing is to identify what is exportable, that you can make profit from that’s the first thing, before using the air transport. With the sea, the options are so many because you carry things that have long gestation, they have the space and it’s a lot cheaper to ship by container than it is to load by air cargo. The industry needs to confirm with the constant change in information technology and try to form more alliances with the big players in the industry. The truth is that we are still a growing aviation.
