The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is migrating from paper applications for technical personnel to a digital platform. Speaking yesterday at the unveiling of the Modern Personnel Licensing and Certification (MPLC) NCAA Digital Transformation Initiative PEL/MED Stakeholder Engagement, held at the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), Lagos, the Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Chris Najomo, said the new regime would take effect from July 2, 2026.
Key Benefits of the Digital Platform
Najomo in his keynote address stated that the fully digital personnel licensing and medical certification platform is aimed at eliminating delays associated with paper-based processing for pilots, engineers, medical personnel, and other aviation professionals. He said the era of waiting for weeks or months for aviation licences and certifications would become a thing of the past with the new electronic adoption. He expressed that the initiative marks a major milestone in the modernization of aviation regulatory oversight in Nigeria and is designed to strengthen the regulatory backbone of the country's aviation industry. He added that the engagement was organized to ensure industry-wide alignment and readiness ahead of the full deployment of the system.
He added: "Personnel licensing in America is key to airline operators. It is very important. This is what pertains everywhere in America and other advanced aviation systems. I am sure airline operators are asking, 'When are we going to start? When are we going to stop waiting one week, two weeks, sometimes one month for licences to come out?' But I tell you, it is going to be over soon. There will be no more waiting."
Features of the Digital Transformation Initiative
The NCAA boss stated that the digital transformation initiative would provide online and transparent application processes for issuance, renewal, and conversion of licences, while also enabling real-time status tracking and reducing turnaround times. He added that the platform would introduce biometric-backed credentials and QR-code-based licence verification in line with global best practices. Najomo insisted that the aviation industry could no longer rely on manual and semi-automated processes, fragmented databases, and paper-driven workflows in an era where global regulatory compliance, real-time verification, and data integrity had become critical. According to him, the deployment of the digital licensing and medical certification platform represents the first phase of NCAA's wider digital transformation programme.
Future Phases of Digitalization
Najomo further disclosed that the next phases of the digitalisation programme would cover Air Operator Certificate (AOC) processes, Approved Training Organisations (ATOs), Approved Maintenance Organisations (AMOs), aerodromes, air navigation service providers, ground handling organisations, and dangerous goods approvals, among others. He lamented that obtaining an AOC previously took between one and two years before his administration reduced the process to between six and eight months. According to him, the digital platform would further reduce the timeline to about 90 days. Najomo also revealed that the platform would cover technical certification processes such as aircraft registration, airworthiness certification, aircraft maintenance programme approvals, export and import certification of airworthiness, supplemental type certificates, and monitoring of airworthiness directives.
Implementation and Stakeholder Engagement
Also, in his welcome address, the Director of Airworthiness Standards (DAWS), Godwin Balang, said the implementation of the MPLC project by the NCAA would eliminate the era of paper-based processing in aviation certification and licensing. Balang explained that the project was conceived to digitise and modernise the regulatory processes of the authority, stressing that effective aviation oversight could no longer be managed manually. He said: "What we are going to find with my team is not something you can use paper files to do. You need systems. That is why we are gathered here today. The Director-General has picked this project and within two years, he has moved it from where he met it to where it is today. What you are seeing on the screen is the landing page of the software we are talking about. It has a central module, personnel licensing module, technical records module, and organisational approvals module. This is a very big area." Balang disclosed that the NCAA management had gone beyond mere promises by engaging international partners and technical experts to understudy global best practices in aviation digitalisation. According to him, a team from the authority recently travelled to South America for a five-day technical engagement on the implementation of the MPLC project.
