NAMA faults N7.58 billion ILS report

 

NAMA faults N7.58 billion ILS report 

The Nigeria Airspace ManagementAgency has dismissed a newspaper report of September 11, 2026 alleging that it “wasted” ₦7.58 billion on Instrument Landing Systems for Lagos and Abuja airports, insisting that the figure quoted was an old estimate and not the approved contract sum. 

Reacting to the report, Dr Abdullahi Musa, Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at NAMA, said the approved contract for the supply and installation of CAT III-capable ILS and Distance Measuring Equipment for Lagos and Abuja was ₦1,188,139,913.90. 

The contract, he explained, was awarded to Alolis Geo-Science Nigeria Limited, representing Leonardo SPA, formerly Selex, with the requisite approvals of the Bureau of Public Procurement and the Federal Executive Council.

According to Dr Musa, the ₦7.58 billion figure originated from a 2019 newspaper estimate which assumed approximately US$3 million per runway and extrapolated it across seven proposed airport locations. 

“It was neither the approved contract sum for Lagos and Abuja nor evidence of expenditure by NAMA on the two installations,” he said. 

He added that converting the erroneous figure to ₦30.02 billion in present-day value does not make it public expenditure, noting that the report cited no contract, payment certificate, appropriation or audit finding to support either ₦7.58 billion or ₦30.02 billion as money paid for the Lagos and Abuja installations.

The NAMA spokesman also faulted what he described as a fundamental technical misconception in the report. 

He said the procurement was for CAT III-capable ILS/DME ground equipment, not merely an ILS antenna, and that the localizer is an integral component of the system and cannot be presented as an additional facility NAMA omitted.

More importantly, Musa stressed that installing CAT III-capable equipment does not automatically make an airport CAT III operational. 

Such operations, he explained, require an integrated system comprising a calibrated and serviceable ILS, approved instrument approach procedures, appropriate approach, runway centreline and touchdown-zone lighting, runway visual-range reporting, dependable primary and standby power, protection of ILS critical and sensitive areas, activated low-visibility procedures, and suitably equipped and certified aircraft, operators and flight crews. 

At FAAN-managed airports, airfield ground lighting and airport power fall within FAAN’s responsibilities, while NAMA provides navigation and air traffic services infrastructure and NCAA regulates and approves operations. 

“CAT III, therefore, is a coordinated aviation-system responsibility. The absence of a complementary aerodrome facility cannot reasonably be presented as evidence that NAMA failed to provide the ILS,” Dr Musa stated.

He cited the operational history of Lagos Runway 18R to buttress the point. Following installation of the CAT III system, pilots reported that the equipment could take aircraft off course during final approach and could also go off altogether. International airlines consequently resorted to Runway 18L. 

The associated lighting facilities required for CAT III operation were unavailable, while NIMET was also expected to provide necessary meteorological input. NAMA subsequently engaged stakeholders and, following consultation and approval by the supervising Ministry, replaced the equipment with CAT II capability pending provision of the complementary facilities required for CAT III operations. It was thereafter calibrated and passed the requisite checks.

“The problems with the CAT III system began right from installation and persisted until IATA raised concerns about the equipment’s safety and its tendency to transmit misleading parameters to aircraft,” Dr Musa said. 

He added that the agency also received several operational reports from Air Traffic Controllers, the Safety Management System unit, international airlines and Air Traffic Engineers, all pointing to the need to address the problem because it was increasingly becoming a threat to safety. 

“The truth of the matter is that we never had CAT III in Nigeria. It was merely a name, as the equipment was downgraded to CAT II to align with the categories of other complementary facilities such as runway lighting, aircraft compliance with CAT III, trained crew on CAT III, stable power, and so on. The Abuja facility is also not operating as CAT III but rather has been downgraded to CAT II owing to the reasons stated above. The product was replaced to protect the flying public due to the erratic malfunctioning observed since its installation. The operational records of the facility before its removal are well documented.”

NAMA said the decision was not an admission that the procurement was worthless, but a reflection of the reality that Nigeria did not, at the time, have the complete ecosystem required for CAT III operation. 

Musa noted that NAMA’s operational records show that the Lagos Runway 18R and Abuja Runway 22 facilities were subsequently commissioned, certified and promulgated for operation in February 2020 following necessary realignment, recalibration and validation, contradicting the assertion that the systems “never worked for one day.”

He acknowledged that subsequent integrity and serviceability problems occurred in Lagos, and that the Selex platform also presented fleet-commonality, training, spares and lifecycle-support concerns because NAMA’s established maintenance environment had greater familiarity with Thales and Indra systems. “A safety-critical navigational aid that cannot consistently demonstrate the required integrity must be downgraded, withdrawn or replaced. That is safety management, not waste,” Dr Musa said.

On the second phase of the programme, he said it covered Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Port Harcourt International Airport and Katsina Airport, not Maiduguri and Sokoto as reported. Its initial approved sum was ₦1,824,643,438.33, while an augmentation of ₦546,109,336.33 brought the total approved project value to ₦2,370,752,774.66. Implementation, he said, was affected by funding constraints and legitimate concerns about reproducing the reliability, commissioning, spares and lifecycle-support difficulties encountered during the first phase.

Dr Musa also expressed concern over the report’s attribution, through anonymous sources, of allegations that the project was a conduit for “cornering” public funds. “No audit finding, judicial decision, procurement investigation or competent determination was cited to establish such wrongdoing. An allegation from an anonymous source should not be elevated into an established fact,” he said.

On the Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria, Dr Musa said the core architecture has been deployed for more than fifteen years, with critical hardware increasingly obsolete and replacement components and manufacturer support becoming difficult to obtain. Thales, the original equipment manufacturer, he noted, has proposed replacement rather than another limited modernisation. Nigeria, he said, now requires a resilient surveillance architecture integrating primary and secondary radar with complementary technologies such as ADS-B and wide-area multilateration.

Regarding the Aeronautical Information Services automation project, Dr Musa said it is an inherited obligation. “The present NAMA Management neither awarded nor initiated it but has continued to discharge the inherited contractual obligation, with payment now close to full settlement,” he said. He however cautioned that settling an inherited contract should not be confused with declaring that its original technical specification remains adequate for today’s operational requirements.

Dr Musa reaffirmed NAMA’s commitment to transparency and accountability, but said responsible journalism requires that estimates be distinguished from contract sums, procurement be distinguished from operational performance, and safety interventions be distinguished from waste. “The agency will continue to prioritise the safety and efficiency of Nigerian airspace and will never compromise the protection of the flying public merely to preserve an investment whose operational integrity has become questionable. The decision to downgrade or replace safety-critical equipment when its integrity becomes doubtful is not an abandonment of responsibility. It is precisely what responsible airspace management demands,” he said.