Of the 26 airports being managed by the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), only six of them record above 5,000 aircraft movement in a year. All the others depend on the six airports ? Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Owerri, Port Harcourt and Enugu ? to stay afloat. So, when in 2020 some state governments decided to build airports in Anambra, Benue, Ekiti, Nasarawa and Ebonyi, while the federal governmentwas being urged to take over the ones built by Kebbi, Jigawa and Gombe States, we queried the rationale behind the decision. The question we posed at the time remains unanswered: In a period of lean resources when the government is borrowing to meet commitments, why does it have to saddle the country with more cost centres?

The consequences of building unviable airports are that huge resources, which would have been used to provide essential infrastructure and other amenities are being frittered away. Between January and July 2022, according to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) data, there were 9,473,813 domestic air travellers, a 13 per cent drop from the same period in 2023, when 8,176,722 travelled by air within the country. With the astronomical rise in the cost of air tickets, the situation has since worsened. So we fail to understand the obsession at a period the shortage of aircraft has forced local airlines to streamline their operations, and rendering many of these airports operationally redundant.

In recent times the federal government has taken over some state-built airports and handed them to FAAN to manage but none is viable. For instance, the cargo airport at Lafia, Nasarawa State, has been abandoned with its facilities allowed to rot. Conceived by former Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, the airport was estimated to have cost about N10 billion with the sole purpose of dumping it on FAAN, as many others have done. Unable to complete that process, most of the facilities and equipment at the airport have now collapsed. Meanwhile, airports in states that are sustaining their operations like the ones in Uyo (Akwa Ibom) and Asaba (Delta) are not contemplating handing over their facilities to the federal government.

Today, FAAN is shopping for about N580 billion to rehabilitate the runways of 17 unviable airports under its management. It is not only that these airports cannot generate revenue to justify the huge investment on them, but also that they push aviation agencies like the National Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and others into spending huge resources recruiting personnel and providing training and logistics to manage redundant airports. In many states where airports have been built, their primary and secondary school infrastructure have collapsed, essential roads that connect to different parts are dilapidated while most of their residents do not have access to social amenities like hospitals and potable water.

Looking at market projections, there is not likely going to be sudden rise in air transport because of low per capita income, even if alternative means of transport like rail and road do not expand. Most of the airports, especially the ones built by the states, only serve the interest of the governors and other government officials who travel through them with charter services, as scheduled passenger services cannot break even for commercial airlines due to low passenger throughput. This is also part of the reason why the existing airports still have obsolete facilities as there are not enough funds to upgrade them. Since many of the airports do not have critical amenities like airfield lighting, it makes no sense that states are expending huge resources to build them.

Despite these developments, more states recently secured licenses from the NCAA for the construction of airports. But now that it is obvious most of these airports are unviable, we expect the federal government to put a cap on such projects. Any new state that wants to establish an airport should submit a reasonable justification. The funds being used to build these airports could be rightly prioritised by investing them in projects that will benefit the people. (THISDAY Editorial)

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