Institutional Framework Needed for Airport Concession, Says Minister

Emma Okonji

The Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah has stressed the need to put the right institutional framework in place and guide it zealously with appropriate policy implementation, if Nigeria must succeed in addressing the huge anomalies that is embedded in the public and private sector ecosystem.

The minister stated this in Lagos at a forum organised recently by the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), while responding to the concerns of Nigerians on the planned airport concession by the federal government.

The stakeholders who were bitter about the poor state of Nigerian airports, said airports in Nigeria were worse-off, compared to airports in other parts of the world, and a disincentive to foreign investors who want to do good business in the country.

They condemned the poor state of infrastructure at the Nigerian airports, as well as the attitude of immigration staff towards air passengers.
They therefore urged the federal government to be sensitive in the award of airport contracts to cronies who never bother on quality.

However, Enelamah assured Nigerians that the proposed airport concession would take a different dimension from what is obtainable in the past in order to get the best result.

According to him, past governments entered into business agreements without the intention to retain them, a situation that has caused loss of revenue to foreign investors in the past and they equally lost confidence in government business. But all of that have been taken care of with the ‘Executive Order’ of the federal government.

Narrating some of the obstacles at the airport, the stakeholders complained of delay in airport concession. They said it was taking four different ministers to conclude on a single airport concession, and want the current government to speed up the process. Citing airport rental agreement with government as chaotic, some of the stakeholders said there were situations where people pay for land lease at premium cost without signing an agreement. “I know of a businessman that has paid over N12.8 million for a land around the airport area land yet the agreement has not been signed and it has not been concluded.

People pay rental fees every year of up to 25 per cent of the total earnings from the land, as well as 5 per cent turnover fee. All these make business a lot more difficult at the airport.
My first investor left me with well over N500 million worth of investment as a result of government frustrating plans. The reason was that after approval had been given by the minister for a particular land to be released, some agencies said the land had already been taken. We need government to address all of these in order to make airport concession work in Nigeria,” the stakeholders said.

The minister however blamed some of the challenges on agency issues, and called for more collaboration between government and the private sector. He assured Nigerians that putting institutional framework in place, would help to cleanup the mess in the system, which he said would be a gradual process.

“Some progress have been made at the airports like issuing of visa on arrival but these are what I describe as addressing the low-hanging fruits. We still need to put institutional framework in place to address the major issues at our airports,” Enelamah said.