AFTER 10 years of the organizing the Nigeria Aviation Award, (NIGAV), Chairman Airport Business Summit, Fortune Idu has said the event has aided in promoting best practices in the industry and increase the level of professionalism.
This is just as he has said the highlight of this 10th anniversary of the NIGAV Award and Ministerial Dinner is that it is happening at the NIGAV Expo Center, its own facility on December 19, 2021.
The theme of this year’s award is Response and Recovery. This is to recognize various efforts, strategies, policies and actions by individuals and organizations in managing the side effects of COVID-19 disruption and recovery initiatives for getting aviation industry back on track.
Idu spoke further on the upcoming event and prospects for the aviation industry stressing that this edition may take the NIGAV Awards a notch further especially with its gradually restart in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic stressing that despite the industry challenges people are still striving to move it and that they need recognition.
There will be 54 awards being handed out on the night from consisting Airline CEO of the Year, Airline of the Year, Aviation Agency of the Year,Aviation Man of the Year,Best Airport of the Year, Unsung Hero and much more
He said,” This award ceremony and celebration which we say NIGAV award and Ministerial Dinner is been on for over 10 years, it is geared towards promotion of best practice in the industry and rewarding those who are behind the scene of every year successful aviation year and when we talk about the desire and improvement and confidence of people to travel you find out that once people are saying you had a successful aviation year, it creates the desire and interest for people to use the air transport industry”
Explaining this year’s award, Mr. Idu said it will be given to general performers and key individuals, companies who played a key role to sustain the dynamic of the industry.
He said,”First, we look at generally how the industry has performed and you can see there is a a serious increase in terms of traffic almost climbing to post Covid which is good recovery so, the question is what role did people, individuals, companies play to get us to this point?
“So, this year’s event we are looking at recovery, what role did people play in getting us to the point where we are now approaching post Covid traffic in a very short while? Because the assessment was that the Industry will take long to recover but now, it is recovering very fast so, what role did we play, what role did individuals play? We start to look at each unit and what role could they have played.
“For instance, restart of the airport, operations played a very serious role in restart of the airport and making sure we didn’t have pandemonium at the airport in terms of human management ad all that, there was this issue of having to put lines, having to restrict movement, having to monitor movement, having to insist in change in behavior, character, wearing of masks, these are completely strange things to people, we had to put that in the industry, force it on the industry and off course people complied, people made sure that people complied and those people who made sure that people complied we need to look at them.
“The airlines themselves also complied seriously, we need to look at it. Then the management of the industry, how were they able to effectively bring out policies and how they able to get these policies out to the public for the public to comply?”
Idu said there will be other activities at the NIGAV Awards including catwalk for uniforms, King and Queen of the Air Competition among other things to spice up the award.
The Honourable Minister for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika has been invited as the Chairman of the Occasion with Hon. Nnaji Nnolim, the Chairman House of Assembly Committee on Aviation and Secretary of the Federal Government, Boss Mustapha as special guest of honour with all the aviation industry leaders as guests. The event, as usual will include the industry performance appraisal presentation and outlook 2021.
