The director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Alex Okoh has applauded the Skyway Aviation Handling Company Limited, SAHCOL for the success it has recorded since after privatisation.
The visit to SAHCOL is part of the bureau’s post privatization monitoring programme.

After the physical inspection of SAHCOL facilities, Okoh could not hide his admiration for the company, when he revealed that the initial briefing he had was that the SAHCOL facilities were ‘world class’, and that what he saw after the inspection truly matches the description of “world class”.

Okoh, who was accompanied on the visit by the BPE director of Capital Market, Baba Mohammed, and received by the managing director of SAHCOL, Rizwan Kadri, and the management staff at the company headquarters applauded SAHCOL for a job well done so far.

He said part of the visit is to seek whether it is ripe to give SAHCOL a clean bill of health, in order to present a discharge certificate to the company, so as to be completely off the monitoring of BPE.

The director general, revealed that SAHCOL is one of their success story so far, and hence will want to understand the dynamics behind the success, and perhaps be able to replicate it in BPE’s future privatization and transactions.

He stated that, “essentially we want you to know that we are quite pleased with the progress SAHCOL has made so far, which goes to justify the principles of privatization.”

Going down memory lane, the director general  uncover the reason behind federal government privatization exercise, stressing that the federal government, as part of the effort to put action to the general notion that the government has no business in business, enacted a law in 1999, known as the Public Enterprise Act, to identify certain government enterprises which needed to be privatized and handed over to the private sector.

This, according to him is to ensure that the efficiency of the services rendered by these enterprises are improved upon, and also to stop the bleeding in terms of the pressure that these enterprise that were not fully efficient were putting on the treasury of the federation.

He said, Nigerian Airways was one of the enterprise that was identified to be privatised, while others cuts across various sectors. Incidentally, SAHCOL was one of the subsidiaries of Nigeria Airways that was slated for privatisation, and this was because of the realisation that Ground Handling as an aviation services will be best managed by private sector led initiative.

In addition, he said the transaction method observed and chosen for the particular privatisation of SAHCOL was full privatisation, so as to heighten the level of services rendered, given the international benchmark, but in some of the other enterprise sold, government has held some stake essentially in order to direct the strategic services that is provided to the public space.

Reinforcing the essence of his visit to SAHCOL, Okoh emphasized that, what BPE tries to do, especially for the fully privatised companies like SAHCOL “is to keep monitoring the performances of the level of services rendered, given the international best practices that have to be met, to ensure that they meet the critical objectives of privatisation in the first place.”

The BPE director general reiterated that SAHCOL is “a good story”, as all the privatised companies have not been successful, “because in some of the fully privatized entity, what you find is that some of the services that they were supposed to render are not being rendered, essentially running fowl of the objectives of the whole exercise”, but glad to say that for what he has seen so far the Bureau is so impressed.

He congratulated SAHCOL for a job well done so far, while disclosing that BPE will also be looking at possibility of SAHCOL listing some of its shares in the stock market in the future.

SAHCOL was handed over to the Sifax Group in December 2009, after its successful privatization by the federal government of Nigeria. Within this period, SAHCOL has invested in personnel development, purchase of modern equipment, infrastructural development and good customer services, which has helped reposition the company to meet the expectations and needs of its growing list of clientele.

SAHCOL, which is an excellent example of a very successful government privatization, is an Aviation Ground Handling company, offering services in Passenger Handling, Ramp Handling, Cargo Handling and Warehousing, Aviation security, Baggage Reconciliation, Crew Bus and Executive Lounge services and other related Ground Handling services; while ensuring that Ground Handling assignment is carried out in an efficient, speedy and safe manner, by deploying appropriate tools.