The President of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies, Yinka Folami, has confirmed his willingness to work with the Lagos Aviation School to prevent quackery among its members.
This disclosure was made by the association on Tuesday at the launching of a new building for the school in Lagos, according to The Punch.
In his address to pressmen at the event, the Group Managing Director of Finchglow Holdings, a parent company of the aviation school, Bankole Bernard stated that the collaboration would boost the professionalism of travel agents.
He said, “The collaboration coming from NANTA is to increase the level of professionalism of their members. NANTA is interested in enhancing its members to end quackery. They want to increase the knowledge base of their members and I think that is a step in the right direction.
“We need to collaborate with as many as possible so that we can all be enlightened as core professionals and our industry will be better for it.
“Today, if you go to Singapore with a population of about five million people, they have about 4.5 million people registered with their national library, which signifies that they don’t joke with education and knowledge. So, we can replicate such in the aviation industry so we too can have trained professionals that can be exported into the rest of world.”
The Finchglow Holdings GMD also described how his passion for travel and desire to set worldwide standards in the aviation industry led him to retire as a banker years ago to establish Finchglow Travel.
“The idea of coming into the aviation industry started in 2002; I was a banker and I quit the job in 2003. In 2002, I wanted to go into the aviation industry to float an airline, but I realised that floating an airline is capital intensive and I didn’t have such capital. However, it is always good to start at the rock bottom; nobody climbs the ladder from the top,” he said.
He also explained why he decided to open an aviation training school, saying, “Basically, this vision came when I visited the office of the International Air Transport Association in Madrid, Spain, and I had a meeting with their then-vice president, and they told me that there were less than 10 Approved Training Organisations in Nigeria.” I asked how we could have fewer than ten accredited ATOs in a country with over 200 million inhabitants.”
Meanwhile, the acting Director General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, Chris Najomo, represented by the Lagos Zonal Director of the agency, Bukola Teriba, commended the stride of the school.
He urged management to maintain the industry’s professional standards.
“We are happy with what you are doing. I understand we put you through a lot of scrutiny and you too will attest to the fact that it makes us better and makes the industry better for it. Once again, I want to congratulate you on this feat,” he declared.
