Nigeria keeps building airports – but where are the passengers?

Last Thursday the governor of Zamfara, one of Nigeria’s poorest states, held a ceremony to mark the start of construction on an international airport in the state capital Gusau.

“The economic benefits and multiplier effects … are quite enormous,” Dauda Lawal said. “The airport will have a tremendous impact on the ease of doing business and other social interactions [here].”

… they are not only for the pleasure of those who can afford to fly.”

Some experts agreed that having plenty of airports could eventually be beneficial to Africa’s most populous country, even if the motivation for building them was sometimes questionable.

“Heathrow used to be a village until the airport came,” said Samuel Akinyele Caulcrick, a former rector of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology. “Politicians have their own reasons for building them [but] what we should be asking is why are we not using them to their full potential, because airports are supposed to drive development wherever you put them.”

Part of the problem is cost: fares have doubled in the past three years in a country where more than half the population live on less than £1 a day. Multiple taxes imposed by different government agencies don’t help, and nor do high service charges.

In 2023 the International Air Transport Association said the $100-a-passenger service charge at Lagos and Abuja airports was the most expensive globally. “How can you have such high taxes and expect to be profitable?” Kamil Al-Awadhi, Iata’s vice-president for Africa and Middle East, reportedly said at the time.

One solution put forward at industry forums to reduce the number of “ghost” airports operating far under capacity is for an expansion in freight transportation by plane. Caulcrick pointed to the possibility of flying raw and processed goods to Lagos port for exportation instead of bringing them by truck.

Toni Ukachukwu, the head of the Lagos-based consultancy Aviators Africa and host of ASAP, a podcast on industry sustainability, said the industry needed to expand beyond traditional commercial and business passenger aviation in large jets.

“In South Africa and Kenya you have your three, four and five-seater airplanes that do scenic flights, agricultural flights, game reserve flights etc,” he said. “We don’t have that in Nigeria.”

Ukachukwu suggested the industry should learn from a rare domestic success story. “Ibom Air is one model Nigerian operators need to look at,” he said, referring to the oil-rich Akwa Ibom state’s carrier, which has a reputation for punctuality. “State-owned but independently managed by professionals … for five years, they have steadily grown to where they are now.”