Echoes of deficiencies in the country’s airport facilities have been triggered by the Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers’ union in its recent call to the Federal Government to intervene in remedying the anomaly. Under focus are fixing of lighting at the Runway 181/36R and the abandoned taxiway B at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, speeding up the ongoing upgrade of Controller-Pilot and Controller-Controller communication facilities and providing surveillance equipment.
There are gaping holes in many runways that vitiate safety guarantee among other concerns, which have made Nigeria’s airports – both local and international – to plunge into the league of the worst in the world. Nigeria has 22 of such airports under the control or maintenance of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
Lack of lighting of runways and airfields has been a long-standing deficiency limiting optimal utilisation of services at most of our airports. Among them is the Sam Mbakwe Airport, Owerri, Imo State, which ranked fourth after Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt airports in terms of passenger traffic statistics of FAAN in 2016. It is a no-go area for flights immediately night falls. Similarly, in January, an Arik Air flight from Lagos to Asaba, Delta State, was forced to return to Lagos with its passengers after it had reached its destination around 6.15 p.m. The time was difficult for the flight to discharge its passengers and return without being caught in the labyrinth of darkness.
Even the Lagos airport, the country’s aviation hub, was not immune from this impediment until 2012. Supo Atobatele, the Manager, Public Affairs, Nigeria Airspace Management Agency, then, said, “The absence of the airfield lighting on the runway for half a decade had forced the domestic airlines to land after sunset at the international wing of the airport.”
Runways in our airports have cracks on their macadamised surfaces just as our roads, posing potent threats to safety. Government realised this danger last year, when it shut the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for re-asphalting of its runways. It was a difficult moment for passengers and airlines. Local flights were diverted to Kaduna airport, but international airlines, save Ethiopian Airlines, restricted their operations to Lagos. A South African airline had lost one of its landing gears when it rammed into one of the potholes amid threats by other airlines to stop their services until repairs were carried out. Built in 1982, the runway ought to have been resurfaced in 2002.
These foreign airlines’ reactions underline the fact that the aviation business is governed by international best practice. The MMIA, the country’s best, and Port Harcourt International Airport, were in November 2017 ranked among the 20 worst airports globally, in a survey conducted by Sleep in Airport website. It used criteria such as comfort services, cleanliness, customer services, navigation, immigration and sleep-ability.
Indeed, government’s ownership monopoly of airports creates infrastructure gaps. Such circumstances make the delivery of world class services impossible. Added to this conundrum is official corruption.
Runway incursions by Fulani herdsmen with their cows, even at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, host communities at Port Harcourt Airport, thieves at Lagos airport and the general easy access to the airports by miscreants suggest that Nigeria is still light years behind in the global aviation business. More sour records are in flight delays and cancellations. According to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, 30,214 flight delays were recorded in 2017, while 872 flights were cancelled due to logistics and other reasons.
Dangerous runways, inadequacies in operational equipment, stinking toilets, crowded lounges, indebtedness to FAAN currently standing at N2.6 billion for its services at airports in Lagos, Gombe, Kebbi and Delta states, and rocketing operational costs, which foreign airlines said were the highest globally, would continue to blight the country’s aviation operations if the authorities remain impervious to change.
As a result, the time has come for Nigeria to make sense out of the prognosis of the International Air Transport Association that a developed aviation industry contributes robustly to national economic development. It is a big boost to tourism and the hospitality sub-sector, as it supports thousands of jobs, facilitates skills and technology acquisition and image or branding of nations.
To optimise these benefits will require the opening up of our aviation services to liberalisation and private sector control through privatisation. This was what Britain achieved when it ceded Gatwick Airport and London City Airport to Global Infrastructure Partners. Heathrow Airport is now being operated by Ferovial of Spain in alliance with companies from Canada, China and Singapore.
Nearer home, Morocco has tapped into the services of the National Aviation Services – the fastest growing aviation service provider in emerging markets – to begin operating electronic gates at the Marrakesh Menara Airport departure lounge. It is now a self-service check-in, no long queues, the first of its kind in Africa. NAS has a 10-year concession contract to refurbish and manage 16 airports lounges in that country for technology-driven efficient service delivery.
Regrettably, in the wake of every Nigerian government’s avowal to embrace this global best practice is equivocation. Again, this has evinced in the inertia in the plan to concession four international airports – Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt – after the pledge was made in the third quarter of 2017; and 2018 will end in just a few days. The Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo and the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, who confirmed this policy compass, owe the public explanations.
The government was wrong in using public funds to construct the new international wing of Nnamdi Azikiwe airport, Abuja. After the so-called $500 million Chinese loans, purportedly used to revamp the airports failed to animate them, common sense and logic dictate that public funds should no more be used to dress them in borrowed robes. Let private capital flow in.
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