The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria said last week that only three of the 22 airports in Nigeria are profitable.
Speaking on a live television programme on Tuesday, FAAN’s Managing Director, Olubunmi Kuku, said several states in the north and South West are developing new airports.
She said the authority is cross-subsidising the other 19 airports and will continue to do so for some of the new airports being developed.
“I started off by saying that we have 22 airports which we own and manage. We also have about six or seven airports that are either owned by state governments or private individuals or entities which we also support with either aviation security or fire and rescue services.
“We have a number of states in the north as well as in the South West that are coming up with new airports.
“I would say that based on the statistics today, only three of the 22 airports are actually profitable and contribute largely to the sustenance of the airport companies that we run.
“I would also say that we are actually cross-subsidising the other 19 airports today and in most instances, we will substitute or cross-subsidise for some of the airports that are coming on board as well.”
“At the last count, 15 states across the country have pumped N404.4 billion into various unviable airport projects”
Kuku said the FAAN contributes 50 percent of its revenue to the federal coffers which is a major challenge, adding that the authority is in discussions with the various arms of government to seek some relief.
The FAAN boss said passenger traffic is driven by gross domestic product growth and economic activities rather than the construction of new airports.
Kuku said it is important to focus on key activities such as trade, manufacturing, and tourism to increase airport traffic.
“Rather than building new airports, we need to look at the bottom of the value chain to determine what activities can drive traffic into these airports,” Kuku said.
She said FAAN is collaborating closely with international organisations, including the International Air Transport Association and the Federal Ministry of Aviation, to expand both domestic and international routes.
Kuku said there are initiatives in place to transform Nigeria and specific airports within the country into transit hubs.
“What that means is that we start to build a network of airports where we can push our feeders to some of the other states or to some of the other locations and start to utilise our airports,” she said.
The FAAN boss said nearly four million passengers currently travel internationally from Nigeria, stressing that the efficient use of infrastructure is essential for sustaining and maintaining the facilities.
White elephant airport projects
Many state governments in Nigeria are putting billions of taxpayers’ money into white elephant airport projects with little passenger traffic across the country.
The viability of these multi-billion-naira projects remains questionable, considering the low level of passenger and aircraft traffic originating and terminating from them.
At the last count, 15 states across the country have pumped N404.4 billion into various unviable airport projects.
A breakdown of state airport expenditures shows that Bayelsa State spent N60 billion on its airport, while Akwa Ibom spent N20 billion. Delta and Jigawa spent N17 billion each, while Bauchi pumped N15 billion into an airport project.
Kebbi, on its part, spent N15 billion on an airport. Other states which are on the same journey are: Ogun (N20 billion), Ekiti, (N20 billion), Abia (N40, billion); Nasarawa State (N40 billion), Osun (N40 billion) and Zamfara (N62.8 billion).
Anambra State cargo airport in South East Nigeria cost N10 billion, while that of Ebonyi State has gulped N49.6 billion.
More so, Wachakal Airport, Damaturu, Yobe State, costs N18 billion but is still uncompleted. Despite billions pumped into these airports, Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt and Enugu generate 89. 7 percent passenger traffic in the country. The remaining 10 percent are shared by the remaining 27 state airports.
In 2022, the passenger traffic stood at 16.2 from 14.2 million passengers in 2021, indicating a 13 percent increase over the period.
There are 32 airports in Nigeria, including five recognised international aerodromes, which are: Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos; Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja; Port Harcourt International Airport; Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport and Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu.
Out of the over 16 million travellers that were airlifted into and out of the country in 2022, the five airports listed above were responsible for carrying 89.7 percent of all the travellers within the period, while the other 27 airports airlifted just 10.3 percent of passengers within the period.
According to data, passenger traffic will be reduced to 15.89 million in 2023.
Consequently, experts say there are no passengers to occupy the ‘white elephant projects’ being built across states in Nigeria.
“Governments have very little or nothing to do with commercial aviation services other than the safety and security services, standards regulations, oversight and enforcement,” said a former airport commandant and the CEO of Centurion Aviation Security and Safety Consult Nigeria, John Ojikutu.
“Akure Airport in Ondo State, less than 40 minutes’ drive from Ado Ekiti, has not recorded up to 200,000 passenger traffic in the last 10 years. Why would Ekiti build another airport without finding out how much of the 200,000 passenger traffic is from the state?
“The same thing with Umueri in Anambra State in between Enugu and Asaba. Ebonyi is next door to Enugu; Abia plans an airport between Owerri and Port Harcourt. So are many like that in the north, especially Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, among others,” he noted.
He said what these states need is to build toll express roads between their state capitals and nearest airports.
Ojikutu said most people who travel by air are mainly government and corporate officials whose trips are generally official and fares paid by their employers.
“It makes no economic sense for the states building airports when they should divert the money to other social services like schools, hospitals, roads,” he added.
The Chief Executive Officer of Mainstream Cargo Limited, Seyi Adewale, said that there are genuine concerns with many airport projects across different states in Nigeria.
Adewale said there is poor maintenance of these airports, noting that the majority of the state governments do not have the requisite skills or structures to maintain effective airports.
“Some states are passing airport maintenance to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), which is still overburdened with maintaining its primary airports across the country.
“Many of these state airports do not have the present capacity to generate enough revenue, cannot attract concessionaires due to low state gross domestic product (GDP), poor status of its citizens, low propensity for businessmen to gravitate there, or other considerations for trade, politics, and tourism. They cannot attract enough investors or tourists into many of these states,” he said.
A recently retired passenger pilot, Horace Miller-Jaja, described the state airports being built as ‘political misfits’ because most have no economic value.
According to Miller-Jaja, huge amounts of money are spent building them, which could be better spent on other sectors of the state.
“They are underutilised. Airlines do not fly there because there is no passenger traffic or cargo to uplift. What you find is the state handing the airport to the Federal Government to own and operate.
“The maintenance of airports in the past has been extremely poor, given the operating modus of FAAN. The constant change of management of FAAN over the years has not helped because each new management comes in with its own plans and ideas for development and upgrade,” he said.
The captain explained that no room was made for physical expansion when these airports were built, noting that a lot of airport terminal buildings have been abandoned.
An industry analyst and director, Research, Zenith Travels, Olumide Ohunayo, argued that some of the airports being built are viable but lack of capacity, competition and innovation has made passenger growth stagnant.
“It is not about the airport being built, but about the airlines. It is the airlines that are making the airports inefficient.
“Airlines can go to these hinterland airports and operate flights such as Benin-Asaba, Asaba-Owerri, Kebbi, and Kano. We have pushed this to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and we are going to escalate it. If we can get that, this will make some of these airports have flight activities. These airlines can start this as a social responsibility,” Ohunayo said.
He said there is a need to look at how to work on the airlines and the process of obtaining the air operating certificate (AOC).
He also said there is a need to harmonise the documents rather than make it cumbersome and expensive for airlines.
The Managing Director, Asaba Airport Company, Christopher Penninck, argued that passenger traffic is not a good indicator of airport viability in Nigeria.
Penninck said it is rather the availability of seats, noting that airlines go through very rough times and they can’t provide enough seats in the face of demand.
Since 1999, some 15 airports built by state governments of Ogun, Bayelsa, Osun, Delta, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Anambra, Abia, Yobe, Nasarawa, Kebbi, Edo, Gombe, and Jigawa have expectedly been underperforming.
Despite the fancy tag of ‘cargo’ or ‘international’ added to their names to give them some functional weight, these facilities do not attract much traffic to justify the expense of building them.
According to a former Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Captain Musa Nuhu, these state airports put a massive burden on the agency that has to manage them with federal resources.
He said some are patronised only by executives who travel once or twice a week.
“An airport that needs N300m a month to maintain and they have just 1,000 passengers a month, there is no magic that can make them sustainable, and FAAN doesn’t have the money,” Nuhu said.
According to aviation experts, aside from Lagos which generates 60 percent of FAAN’s revenue, Abuja and Port Harcourt, most airports in Nigeria do not see as much traffic as even a small town in well-developed economies.
They said this is because airports are about mobility within a productive economy where people and goods must be able to move so as to beat the logistics of space and time.
“In Nigeria where the major subsisting industry is politics, it is unsurprising that most of these useless airports only come into use when a self-important politician needs to travel. Even in the airports with supposedly high traffic, the number of flight delays routinely experienced is either proof that we just do not have as much traffic to fill up air slots, or we are a badly disorganised society, or both are true,” they argued.
It was reported that local airlines have boycotted the newly inaugurated Ebonyi airport due to its defective runway.
This is just as criticism surrounded Governor Francis Nwifuru’s plan to repair the airport with N13.7bn, barely six months after his predecessor, David Umahi, inaugurated the facility which he said cost N36bn.
On Thursday, April 26, 2023, the Ebonyi airport was launched with two inaugural flights of Air Peace aircraft touching down on the runway of the airport.
The ceremony was attended by top federal and state government officials as well as dignitaries across the country.
The same day, the then governor of the state, David Umahi, named the airport after the then President Muhammadu Buhari, but later changed it to Chuba Okadigbo International Airport.
The former governor assured citizens and residents of the state that the project would deliver goods and increase the fortunes of the state. The airport has however remained a subject of discourse among economic and non-economic experts.
Sadly, a few months after the inauguration, news started making the rounds that the Ebonyi airport runway had developed problems.
As such, airlines boycotted landing at the new airport. Unfortunately, the airport which was barely seven months old has yet to yield any revenue into the coffers of the state government which needs revenue to pursue its growth and development agenda.
The development has elicited criticisms and other stakeholders.
Following the challenges with the runway which was reportedly constructed using concrete technology; the Federal Ministry of Aviation recommended the use of asphalt to overlay the runway to fix the defects, according to the new Ebonyi governor.
Nwifuru said the ministry’s recommendation followed futile engineering attempts by the state government to tackle the construction defects of the concrete runway.
However, the plan to spend an additional N13.7bn elicited criticisms from several citizens and stakeholders. The new cost is expected to raise the total cost of the project to about N49.6bn.
They said spending such an amount would have been unnecessary if the former governor had carried out due diligence and used the right technology.
The new governor, who recently admitted the construction defect challenges with the runway, also said some concerned Nigerians had called him over the problem.
He said, “A governor called me and we discussed at length on the approval of N13.75bn for the airport that is deemed to have been completed and handed over. The question that the governor asked me is the question every reasonable Ebonyi man is asking. The truth is that the mindset of those that started the airport is germane; but did we get it right? In the area of the runway, we didn’t get it right because the runway is jumping and it is destroying aircraft tyres. Initially, we thought the problem was caused by the expansion joints.
“That’s what we believed initially and we said, okay, let us close all the expansion joints and know why it is jumping but it is still jumping and it has spoiled a lot of aircraft and that is why many airlines have refused to land there. And for us to get it right, we approached the Federal Ministry of Aviation and asked them what we can do. They told us that we need to do certification, put thyroids and start laying asphalt. I said wow, we are into trouble. When you look at the amount that was sunk into that airport, it is not something you get up and say you want to abandon.”
The governor said the state government had spent billions on the airport and could not afford to abandon it despite the construction defects.
Nwifuru said, “The former administration sunk N42bn into that edifice. It is one of the best, biggest and largest airports in the country. I said how to make a mark is doing something very difficult or challenging. We have been confronted with a lot of challenges on this matter and we must do something and get it right because our people’s money has been spent on the project and we must get the project right by putting what is right and what everybody wants. This is why we engaged so many contractors including CCECC, Julius Berger and so others to give us their quotations.
“Some gave N14bn, some gave N15bn, and some gave N11bn and N10bn depending on what they do. But we looked at their schedules and the needs of the Ministry of Aviation. We didn’t just venture into the rehabilitation of the airport just to spend money but to make use of the value of our money that has been spent on that project.”
Following the approval of the project, the state government concluded to correct the runway construction defect with the use of asphalt.
The Commissioner for Aviation and Technology in Ebonyi State, Mrs. Ngozi Obichukwu, said the state government was determined to fix the airport runway with the sum of N13.7bn.
She said, “The installation of the asphalt plant is ongoing. The contractor has started casting the asphalt plant base before installation of the components. N13.7bn is involved. From my site, I confirm some of their construction equipment that are on ground such as excavator, bulldozer, pay-loader, crane, water tanker, truck, bituminous tank and paver machine. More machines are still on the way coming such as, vibration roller, milling machine, grader and others.’’
However, stakeholders who criticised the state government over the plan to spend additional N13.7bn on the project, described it as a waste of taxpayers’ funds.
“It makes no economic sense for the states building airports when they should divert the money to other social services like schools, hospitals, roads”
Some of the stakeholders accused the former governor, who built the airport, of failing to carry out due diligence before embarking on the project including the decision to use concrete technology.
Meanwhile, Obichukwu has expressed satisfaction with the ongoing reconstruction of the runway of the Chuba Okadigbo’s Airport, saying flight operation will begin by August in the state.
Obichukwu stated this in April at the airport site in Ezza South Local Government Area of the state during an inspection of the project.
The 3.5 kilometres runway, constructed earlier with concrete, is now being reconstructed with standard asphalting.
The commissioner noted that Ebonyi would be good to go in terms of exporting food crops when the whole project is completed.
“We are good with productions. We can export our rice; we can export our garri and even our salt. We will package it in a way it will be acceptable to the world.
“Before we begin the asphalting on the runway, we have started witnessing the coming in of flights and you know like I have said before, it is both human and cargo airport.
“The runway of the Chuba Okadigbo’s Airport is about 90 percent completed. We have about 500 metres remaining to get it done.
“The expatriate contractors are doing a very good job. Work has been ongoing to ensure that we meet the completion period, which is in May and hopefully, we will commence flight operation by August.
“You people have seen what we have done and the extent we have gone. The contractors that won the bidding for the runway reconstruction have been up and doing,” the commissioner said.
On why the reconstruction of the runway, the commissioner said the initial concrete was causing aircraft to skip off the lane due to galloping.
“Yes, some of the aircraft skipped off the runway. That is the major reason we started this work. We have spoken to some airliners and they are already partnering with us,” she said.