Addressing Airport Infrastructure Funding

Last week, experts in the aviation industry met at the 10th Airport Business Summit and Expo in Lagos to review issues in airport development and identify the most practical and realistic strategy to ensure continuous development of airport infrastructure, reports Chinedu Eze, who was at the summit

One of the protracted challenges faced by government is how to adopt a workable system in which airport facilities can be expanded, modernised and sustained in response to increasing passenger traffic and in consonance with improvement in technology.

Since democratic governance which started in 1999, many ministers appointed to manage air transport in Nigeria had spoken about airport privatisation. Sometimes this pits them against the labour unions representing airport workers and most often the Ministers drop the idea after making bogus promises.

What this shows is that many of the Ministers and the political leadership they served under lacked the political will to make expected changes. And even the Ministers that held serious discussions on privatisation of the airports put their self-interest first and jeorpardised any good intentions they might have.

Government also seems to have come to the conclusion that for the funding of airport infrastructure, the private sector must make significant contribution through Public, Private Partnership (PPP). Although the decision to adopt PPP model does not mean that government has embraced discipline and established policies to protect such agreements. It still faces the precariousness of agreements being reneged in accordance to the whims of whoever is in charge.

Airport Infrastructure

In his opening speech at the summit, the convener of the event, Fortune Idu, observed that due to many years of neglect and past complacency, there is deterioration of the airport land infrastructure and the partitioning and arbitrary allocation of the airport space.

Idu condemned this long-term attitude and said, “It is unfortunate to note that the federal airports have more tanker farms and fuel contractors than the aircraft and airlines operating in the country, and one wonders why. Every fuel depot wants a space at the airport. This does not necessarily generate additional revenue for the airport, but it does introduce additional risk and space constraints.

“It is also sad that many government agencies are acquiring prime airport locations and spreading structures all over the airport space, creating clusters and congestion that give the impression that the airport is full. This is one of the biggest threats to airport development, future expansion, business, and value to the nation.”  He also observed that the airport’s gestating period is 25 years, and those who see empty airport lands should not consider it available land, noting that the future of the airport and the prosperity of the state depend on that so-called available land.

He noted that airports are special economic zones and that the development, financial structure and process cannot be spontaneous. It must be planned, preconceived and programmed, known as a designed built environment.

“Therefore, I call on the Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace to conduct a comprehensive land-use assessment that will identify land-use cases that can free up airport land. This assessment will then inform the conclusion of the airport master plan and halt the reckless acquisition of airport land by government agencies,” he advised.

Idu also observed that airports are an essential national infrastructure that can significantly boost economic development by providing fast mobility links for people and cargo, especially in a vast country like Nigeria. However, sustaining the development and operation of these airports goes beyond the initial intention to build them.

“With the establishment of over 30 airports in Nigeria today, the viability of airports ensures sustainable and secure air service operations to destinations, promoting connectivity. This requires adequate funding for the airports,” he said.

PPP Ownership

As the stakeholders brainstorm, they looked at various funding models and ownership models and came to the conclusion that no model of ownership is the most efficacious, but depended on what works best for any airport.

In his contribution, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Ibom Air, Mr. George Uriesi, said there should be no rigidity in the funding model for the airports, as it seemed that PPP has been adjudged as the panacea to airport funding and management.

Uriesi said there should be more pragmatic and professional approach to airport development in Nigeria, remarking that success in the airport business is less about ownership models and more about seriousness, strategic planning, and execution.

Speaking on the theme: ‘A Multi sector Approach to Unlocking the Airport Investment Potential: Airport Private Partnership: The Prospect and Challenges’, Uriesi repudiated the popular assumption that PPP is the only viable option for developing airport infrastructure. 

Drawing on his extensive experience, including his time with the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), he stressed that airport success stories abound across various ownership and institutional frameworks, from fully government-owned hubs in Dubai and Singapore to entirely private entities like British Airports Authority.

“It doesn’t matter what model you adopt, what matters is how well the model is implemented and whether it is driven by professionalism, planning, and the will to make it succeed. If you want to do PPP, then do it transparently and correctly. Don’t pretend to be pursuing a PPP while secretly favouring a pre-determined outcome. That only leads to failure,” he said.

He excoriated past and ongoing practices in Nigeria where airport infrastructure projects have been executed without master plans, leading to disjointed, inefficient layouts and wasted investment, describing the airport business as a globally settled model that requires long-term planning, clarity of vision, and commitment to proper design based on projected passenger traffic and revenue expectations.

He also frowned at building terminals kilometres away from existing ones, “with no connection to existing infrastructure, a behaviour that is a common mistake that reflects poor planning and political interference, like what happened during the building of international terminal at Lagos airport, when the place originally designated for expansion was dropped due to the inability of the federal government to negotiate out of the legal tussle that held down the land. The terminal was later built at an area that could not give enough space for ramp and an area that was strewn with cables that constituted a hindrance and several power outages at the existing terminal during construction.

“When you build wrong infrastructure, you end up spending even more to correct those mistakes. We’ve made too many of those. A proper master plan is where every successful airport starts”.

Uriesi referenced Lomé’s airport transformation over the past decade, saying that the facility epitomised visionary planning and strategic partnerships that turned a modest facility into a regional hub. 

He also commended Bi-Courtney Aviation Services at MMA2 in Lagos and the Asaba Airport, for showing that airports run with a commercial mind set can deliver excellent results when professionals are empowered to lead, criticising the dysfunction that often results from undue interference by government ministries in airport planning, saying that many of Nigeria’s infrastructural problems stem from decisions imposed on the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) by non-experts. 

“You can’t have a ministry making technical decisions that contradict the advice of the airport’s custodian. That’s how we end up with terminals built in the wrong place, with no supporting infrastructure,” he noted.

He said the Delta State government took a strategic decision by handing the management of the Asaba Airport to professionals, which has since turned it into a viable commercial facility, no longer serving as a cash cow but as a functioning business platform.

The Ibom Air boss raised the alarm over declining air traffic across Nigeria’s domestic network, revealing that traffic had dropped by 27% as of mid-June 2025 compared to previous years with inclination for further dropping; unless some actions are taken to address it.

He advised that stakeholders should take the challenge seriously, stressing that the sustainability of the aviation ecosystem, from airlines to ground handlers and concessionaires, relies on passenger traffic.

“Everyone gets paid because the airline carries passengers. If the airlines don’t fly, the whole ecosystem suffers. So, we have to do the hard work of building viable airport businesses, not just physical infrastructure. We must stop making infrastructure decisions on a whim. We’re running in circles. It’s time to reset and get serious,” he said.

Speaking on PPP and providing incentives to investors to encourage them to invest in airport infrastructure, the Managing Director and CEO of Aero Contractors, Captain Ado Sanusi, said during the summit that the airports are bedevilled with a lot of challenges, which must be addressed to attract investors and also ensure their profitability as a going concern.

One of such challenges is passenger processing time, which he said if reduced would help the airlines in the strive for on time performance, noting that if the airport provides the time it would take it to process each passenger, the airline would multiply the time to the number of passengers for the flight and plan with it for timely take off.

“I’ve seen some airports, when you have five departures at seven o’clock in the morning, as an airline, you will have to take delay. Because they can’t process all the passengers at the same time. That is a challenge.And that I think we should address by the airport operators. One thing that I would like to talk about also is the protocols that we have in some of the airports. And I have gone through, I’m talking now as a passenger, I’ve gone through international airports.
“It’s only in Nigeria that when big people are traveling, they are given some protocols and you are passing them through the same routes that other passengers are passing. This is important because such preferential treatment will make other passengers feel the inequality and this may make them feel bad.

“I’m standing in line with probably a prospective investor in the airport. And he sees somebody come with some protocol officers and they bypass my line and they go through, bypass everywhere and they are checked in. The investor will ask me, oh, is this normal? Yeah, it’s normal in Nigeria.But bear in mind that if you go to JFK, you don’t see that. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It does happen, but there is a particular place for protocols to pass. And as far as I’m going through the normal channel, whether I’m a senator, whether I’m secretary of state or whatever, if I decide to go through the normal channel, I shouldn’t have any protocols. I should just go through the normal line and everything, because the moment you do that, you have sent a signal to other Nigerians that you can actually bypass some protocols that are established,” Sanusi said.

Government Support

In his remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Dr. Ibrahim Kana, spoke about government’s commitment to PPP.

“Under the Renewed Hope Agenda of His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the government has reaffirmed its commitment to fostering Public-Private Partnerships as a key mechanism for sustainable development. In the aviation sector, this is not merely aspirational—it is demonstrable. The Ministry, in line with the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) framework, has championed a number of landmark PPP initiatives designed to reposition the industry. These include the concession of terminal operations at major international airports—such as Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Kano—as well as Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) models for cargo terminals, maintenance hangars, and airport hotel infrastructure,” Kana said.

He also said that a lot of progress has been recorded by the government, pointing out that the successful concessioning of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal II (MM2), remains a reference point for PPP success in West Africa.

“Additionally, the recent approval by the Federal Executive Council of new airport concession agreements underscores our resolve to crowd-in private capital, managerial expertise, and technological innovation,” he added.

The stakeholders, however, agreed that the airports as they are today need some injection of funds and the private sector remains the only source where these funds can come from, hence the inevitably of embracing PPP.