By LOVETH AZODO, Lagos
Aviation Experts have lamented on the unviable and deteriorating conditions of most of the nation’s airports, indicating that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) is not doing enough to fulfil its mandates.
FAAN is expected to develop, provide and maintain Airports, provide necessary services and facilities for safe, orderly, expeditious and economic operation of Air Transport.
But sources claimed that there is prevailing proliferation of airports without economic value, most of which, poorly managed and maintained.
Currently, Airports under the management of FAAN include the ones in Lagos, Abuja, Ilorin, Sokoto, Yola, Kano, Enugu, Benin, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Ibadan, Akure, Katsina, Kaduna, Owerri, Maiduguri, Minna and Jos.
While States which already had airports include: Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kebbi, Delta, Bayelsa, Warri (managed by private concerns), Taraba, Akwa Ibom, while States which airports are under various stages of construction include Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Anambra, Nasarawa, Jigawa and Ebonyi.
The former Managing Director of Capital Airlines and currently industry consultant with Etimfri Group, Amos Akpan said: “Let me re-emphasise that while airport is one of the indices of development, it is not on the top of the list among the basic minimal indices even within the transport sector for our states.
“There are states in Nigeria that are building airports while 70 per cent of her citizens cannot access drinkable water in their homes. Farmers have no rails or access roads linking their communities to city markets. Farmers do not have financial value commensurate to their products because there are no storage facilities.
“Teachers and students have no access to computers. A state where two out of five infants die at birth due to inadequate health care facilities and a state that cannot provide eight hours of electric power in a day. Such states should not have the construction of an airport in their short or medium term programme”.
According to the secretary of industry think-tank body, Aviation Round Table (ART) and the former Commandant of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd),
“There are about 26 airports in the country today, seven are state owned and private, the remaining are federal and more than 15 or 80 per cent of these airports do not generate up two million passenger traffic in any year. Outside Lagos airport with passenger traffic of about five million annually in the South West, where the population is about 50 million, the total passenger traffic annually of Ibadan, Akure and Ilorin airports is much less than 600,000 in any year.”
It would be recalled that FAAN closed some of the debt-ridden airport owned and managed by state airports because of the innumerable debts they owed the authority for the services it rendered to them.
Some of them were compelled by the closure to pay FAAN while others agreed on payment timeline.
Following the debts, aviation stakeholders believe that many of the airports cannot generate revenues that could be used to maintain them and pay airport personnel.
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