The committee posited that AMCON, which has taken over Arik and Aero contractors, should be held responsible for the outstanding debt.
The committee made its position known when authorities the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, appeared before it to defend the 2018 budget appropriation.
AMCON took over Arik on February 9, 2017 over a N135 billion debt.
AMCON during the take-over said Nigerian authorities called upon the corporation to intervene before Arik Air went under like many other carriers before it.
About a year after the take-over, the airline is still in debt.
The chairman of the committee, Adamu Aliero, Kebbi-APC, said the panel will invite AMCON to explain why it has not paid the debts.
“We would equally have a meeting with AMCON because they have taken over Aero and Arik and I don’t see why they should not pay these debts. They have trillions of naira.
“We would compel them to pay because there is no reason why they should not pay. They have taken over the assets and they should also take over the liabilities.”
The panel urged FAAN to immediately submit a debt profile in order to strategise and create a recovery plan.
“When you submit the detail of debt profile, we intend to sit with you and call all the stakeholders in a meeting like this and discuss how the money can be recovered,” Mr. Aliero added.
The Managing Director of FAAN, Sale Dunoma, explained that the agency has taken measures to reduce the debt incurred from airlines through review of its credit policy.
“Normally from our credit policy, we allow the airline to operate with certain credit limit. Unfortunately, these credit limits were abused especially by Arik they are supposed to pay after 2 weeks. That’s the credit limit allowed.
“But we had to review our policy; we started the review of our policy with Arik. A year ago, we stopped Arik from any credit policy. Everything they do is cash and carry since then Arik has not accumulated any debt.
“Any other airline that is not complying with credit limit, we remove the credit totally and make it cash and carry. Arik for now are on cash and carry.”
In respect of outstanding debts, the Managing Director informed the lawmakers that FAAN has commenced a reconciliation plan with AMCON.
“We are saying that AMCON can pay off the debts of Arik. If they can have the assets, why not the debts of government. We are reconciling. We have insisted that after the reconciliation, they pay us at least N10 billion out of N13 billion.
“We would not accept anything less than N10 billion. This applies to any to other airline. If they don’t comply, we reconcile and then come up with payment schedule. To cover this debt, we would bring the detailed debt profile so you can assist us in coming up with a strategy.
“This is very important because we are not collecting any money from the government. Any airline that defaults, in terms of following our credit policy, we sit with them and give them time in which they would pay.
“Failure to do that, we would withdraw our services and stop them from operating. These are some of the things we do to keep the strategy in place.”
The committee also queried FAAN for its low remittances via Internally Generated Revenue, IGR.
Mr. Dunomu assured the lawmakers that the agency would remit, “the outstanding 25 per cent revenue before the end of the year,” adding that lack of operational resources was the reason for the low remittance cited by lawmakers.
