The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act ,FCCPA, which was signed into law on February 5, 2019, by President Muhammadu Buhari, has been described as having a faulty extra territorial application as it concerns aviation.
This provision, according to Chukwuma, will make the NCAA subservient to the FCCP in matters of consumer protection within a jurisdiction that it lacks the technical know-how to adjudicate over matters. He added that all the international regulations provided by ICAO were domiciled in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations from 2006 and amended in 2015. And it was on this premise that the NCAA has a directorate of consumer protection which is mandated to check, investigate and arbitrate on issues of infringements.
“And I ask how possible is it to have a concurrent jurisdiction yet the FCCP will take preeminence. This will surely create conflict between the agencies. As a matter of fact, the new law has a lot of extraterritorial provisions that have to be expunged. But we will make our concerns known to the government and the general public after studying the law,” he said.
This, according to Mr. Anaso Kalu, the Deputy General Manager, Flight Operations and Adjudications, NCAA, was against Article 6 of the Chicago Convention, which reads contrary to the recommendation of the new Act.