The acting National Executive Director, Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Nigeria, Mr. Paul Ndibe has said that Nigeria is losing out of the African Union (AU)’s effort at regionalizing its air market and bolster patronage through the Single Africa Air Market.
Ndibe who disclosed this in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently stated that Nigeria was out of the picture because it has no national carrier to its credit which according to him had eliminated it from the equation of growing income in that regard.
He said, “And with this, of course, we are losing 30% of the expected growth in that sector because if you look at our own indigenous carriers, they are all privately owned with few airlines, some with leasing the aircraft and they can only do that to their own investment capacity and because of the challenges in the aviation sector and the high risk of their investments, they may not be able to access substantial loan in order to grow because one single accident can raze the entire investment. For that reason, we cannot grow beyond a particular level”.
While suggesting that government may have wanted to correct the mistakes of its first effort at Nigeria Air with the recent announcement made by the former Minister of State Aviation that the Nigeria Air project was budgeted for in the 2019 budget to the tune over forty-seven million Dollard, he informed that the equity of Nigerian government had grown to million Dollars saying that “With this amount of money, nobody has told us the equity contribution of government in this regard”.
He continued, “Is the new airline coming under the former equity structure or a new equity structure? They have not revealed. So, we might not be able to weigh government’s action in this regard and they are saying that there are investors, what manner of investors and where are they coming from? What equity are these investor going to own in the new Nigeria Air? So, it is still not clear what government intends to do. But from indication, government still wants to float Nigeria Air but has not been able to make public its full intention in terms of equity investment and that is the only way you can evaluate government’s intention given that they are giving out forty-seven million in this regard.
“But outside that, look at what is happening in the aviation industry all over the world including Africa; people are developing more because as the middle class is growing, as the emerging economies are coming up, the strength of these emerging economies is the strength in aviation. We don’t have it here and there is no country that has a good maritime sector that has no strong aviation sector. They complement, Nigerian maritime is shaking and so, I don’t expect their aviation industry to be strong. It is a strong maritime industry that can strengthen the aviation sector. Our maritime is still wobbling, so, I don’t expect our aviation sector to be strong.
“So, it requires government to step in and energize that sector and the direction government is going is that the government is talking to itself alone not to the public that might have interest in that, government has not told us that it is going to be a PPP project, for that reason, it is highly risk averse investing in aviation sector in Nigeria.
Now, there is the Africa Continental Free Trade and that is going to be a big bolster to both the maritime and aviation sectors and Nigeria is nowhere to be found in the circle. It is a very disgraceful thing in terms of the size of market share we are losing in Africa and of course, all over the world. So, if you look at Africa as your immediate market and you are not strong in that market, you are not a price taker in that market, you don’t have a strong maritime, you don’t have a strong aviation, you don’t have a strong railway, you don’t have a strong road network, of course, you are nowhere and that is the sorry thing about Nigeria”.
On the planned down grading of the Enugu International Airport, The National Executive Director described it as one mistake that government was making unwittingly arguing that one cannot have a strong aviation sector that was from one particular take off point.
According to him,”You have international airport in Kano, you have in Abuja, Lagos, Port-Harcourt and of course, Enugu. For Hajj, you might have in Maiduguri and other locations, but looking at these four that I have mentioned, how centralized are they? Now, if you look at the travelling population, majority of these people come also from the south. Don’t you think that they also incur greater cost in moving from the South to Lagos or to Kano in order to board flight outside the country? I wouldn’t know the actual reason for this but if they are for these reasons that they mentioned, they can be put in place and corrected.
“The idea is to even have an international airport in Makurdi, have international airport as close as even Ilorin, you decentralize it so that you will be able to grow the local economy and then be able to aid those regions to really develop because having an airport means increasing the labour input and then you support the growth of facilities around the airport and people, instead of flocking to Lagos and creating that congestion, they can also go to those airports.
“Just like you have in maritime, it must not be Lagos ports, develop other ports so that people can make a choice. Therefore, if you allow Enugu airport to continue to run, Port-Harcourt airport to continue to run and develop other airports, people can make a choice and through that, you make travelling a lot easier but government may not be thinking in that direction it is left for the government to make it choice”.
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