Barely 90 days the Federal Government mooted the idea of building 10 additional airports across the country, the initiative has been enmeshed in a series of disapproval by stakeholders.
InsightnaijaTV gathered reliably that the government’s plan is suffering a serious setback due to stakeholder apathy, federal, state government disputes and airport concession debate, amongst others.
Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, had, late last year, informed that both the executive arm of government and the National Assembly had collaborated for the growth and development of the civil Aviation sector since 2015 when the current administration came on board through the development of a roadmap, which is being implemented.
The Minister, who noted that Aviation has become the fastest-growing sector of the economy despite the setback suffered from the COVID -19 pandemic, explained why the government is planning to build new airports in Anambra, Benue, Ekiti, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Gombe, among other states.
Sirika also noted that Kebbi, Osubi – Warri, Dutse airports had been taken over by the federal government while the Gombe state government had also written to the federal authorities, asking it to take over its airport project.
Among the concerns raised by stakeholders were the lack of transparency, the pending airport concession plan, poor status of existing airports amongst others.
As for the state airports, experts have queried what interests the state governments have in aviation, particularly in airport development as against projects that would benefit the generality of their citizens such as health, education, urban road, food security, and others.
They are of the view that funds invested in aviation could be spent on more critical areas for the majority of their people, in the form of social amenities.
Reports have shown that some state governments are fond of building airports half way during their tenures only to abandon them or ask the federal government to take them over when their operation and maintenance cannot be sustained or guaranteed from state budgets.
In his submission, former Commandant, Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Group Captain John Ojikutu, said it is more important to make existing ones more viable than building new airports.
Condemning plans to build more new airports, Capt Ojikutu said “If the federal government is planning 10 more airports and some states without airports are also thinking about building theirs in addition to the 26 federal and state airports, what impact would they be adding to the economy of the country that the existing ones have failed to add.”
Noting that both cargo and passenger traffic is low in the country, Ojikutu, an aviation security expert, asked: “how many passengers, air and cargo traffic, are in the national economic plans that the new airports would be handling?”
Ojikutu said: “Today, Nigeria’s population is more than twice that of South Africa, the annual passenger traffic in Johannesburg alone is about 22 million more than the total passenger traffic in Nigeria’s 26 airports.
“What I am hearing from governments, both federal and states, about building more airports does not make any economic sense especially when the government is planning the concessions of the existing ones because of lack of funds to sustain their operations.
“Something must be behind their agitations and they need to be transparent about their intention and the benefits behind it.”
In his comment, Secretary-General of Association of Nigerian Aviation Professionals (ANAP), Abdulrazaq Saidu, condemned government moves to build more airports, saying that such projects have no economic value.
Comrade Saidu wondered how a government would be planning to build new airports while, at the same time, planning to give away major national airports to private companies to manage.
Meanwhile, the federal government has started the processes involved in achieving concession arrangements for the airports.
Last year, the minister received the Outline Business Case Certificate of Compliance for the concession.
Although the government has made efforts to explain reasons why it has decided to concession the said airports in the country, labour unions have continued to kick against it.
One of the reasons, according to the government, is to develop Nigeria’s major commercial airports and surrounding communities into efficient, profitable, self-sustaining, commercial hubs which will create more jobs and develop local industries through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.
In a recent document issued by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) it disclosed that the Federal Ministry of Aviation (FMOA) will be adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) procurement methodology for expanding and further developing the Nation’s transport sector.
The federal government, through the Ministry of Aviation has adopted PPP as the strategy to leverage private sector participation and investment to achieve the upgrade and development of new terminal infrastructure at the four identified airports in a cost-effective manner.
In line with the ICRC PPP pre-contract regulatory role, the Commission has reviewed the OBCs and have deduced that the Outline Business Cases substantially satisfies the requirements of the ICRC (Establishment Etc.) Act, 2005 and National Policy on Public Private Partnership (N4P).
It was, however, gathered that the next stages to be followed towards the realization of the project include preparation of an Information Memorandum (Info Memo) and request for Qualification (RFQ) by the Transaction Adviser and placement of RFQ invitation to interested bidders.
Other procedures that must be followed include the issuance of RFP to shortlisted firms, opening of data room and hosting of pre-bid conference, technical proposals evaluation and public financial bid opening and declaration of preferred/reserved bids, negotiation and Preparation of Full Business Case (FBC) and approval of the FBC by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and contract signing.
It would be recalled that concession of four airports – Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano – in the first phase of the exercise, was part of the 6-point agenda of Sirika in 2016.
