Handpicked Cronies: Why Jacob Anga’s NAC Chairmanship Should Alarm Every Papua New Guinean

by PAUL LUMBIALU KEBAIJA

On 2 March 2026, the National Airports Corporation advertised for a Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. On 4 March, the advertisement was dead pulled by the recruitment firm Vanguard International, which told readers of the Post Courier it was acting "as per the instruction of our client, the National Airports Corporation Board." The public was asked to disregard it.

It is understood that Chairman Jacob Anga went around the Minister and advertised these two position, he previously attempted to secure the position of Managing Director for himself by causing the role to be advertised in the newspaper through an irregular and unauthorised process. When this plot was exposed, NAC management was compelled to halt the illegal process immediately and revert to the established, lawful recruitment procedures already in place. The Department of Personnel Management and the broader Public Service machinery must now intervene to examine these actions.
It is further reported that Mr Anga is now seeking to install another individual with a poor track record in the sector, someone from the Western Highlands, as Managing Director. This continues a pattern of appointments made by word of mouth and personal selection rather than through the transparent, competitive state processes that exist for such senior positions.

The MD of NAC does not run a corner shop. The corporation controls 22 national airports and the rural airstrip network that, for hundreds of thousands of Papua New Guineans, is the only link to a hospital, a market or a court. Appointing its chief executive is not a matter of preference. It is a statutory process, with board deliberation, merit-based selection and ministerial involvement built in precisely because the alternative, appointment by relationship, is how state entities are hollowed out.

So NAC's Board, chaired by Jacob Roland Anga, needs to answer plainly:
Who instructed Vanguard International to withdraw the advertisement, and under what board resolution? Was the resolution minuted? Was the original advertisement itself authorised by a resolution of the full board, or placed on the authority of one person? Did the Minister for Civil Aviation, Hon. Wake Goi, or the Department of Personnel Management raise any objection to the process, and if so, on what grounds?

There is a further matter the Chairman should address directly. Mr Anga is publicly listed as Chief Executive Officer and Director of JRA Limited, and previously served NAC as Project Director, Head of Audit and General Manager Finance & Strategic Business. A chairman with a private commercial footprint in the aviation and construction space carries an obvious conflict-of-interest burden, not an accusation, an obligation. JRA Limited, an entity in which Mr Anga holds a interest, has been awarded NAC Contract to maintain all Rural Airstrips in PNG, this is something that will soon come out to the PNG public. Have his interests been declared on the board's register, and did he absent himself from any decision touching them?

These are not hostile questions. They are the questions any competently governed state entity answers in a paragraph. The refusal to answer them is what converts a procedural hiccup into a governance failure.

NAC has, in recent months, signed substantial upgrade contracts, including with China Railway Construction Group for the Finschhafen airstrip. Money is moving. Leadership is unresolved. And the corporation has demonstrated it is willing to place a public advertisement and withdraw it two days later without telling anyone why.

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