FAAN MD urges urgent economic, tourism push to grow passenger traffic

2026-03-08 - 18:27

By Dickson Omobola Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, has said boosting passenger traffic in Nigeria will require improvements in the country’s business environment and boosting tourism. Kuku also said for Nigeria’s hub strategy to be effective, international airports need dedicated transit areas, along with increased aircraft movements and additional points of entry. FAAN MD, who spoke on CNBC Africa, added that compared to other countries, Nigerian passengers travelled less due to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP. Her words: “A hub is literally an environment or an airport environment where you are able to have transit passengers move from one location to the other without necessarily making that country their end destination. In Nigeria, for example, when you look at the key factors that drive passenger traffic, the biggest is the Gross Domestic Product, GDP. “When you look at the GDP of the Nigerian population, and you compare it to our passenger traffic, it is actually very low, less than two per cent. What that means is that a lot of the passengers that are Nigerian passengers are not travelling in contrast to all of the other areas. For us to be able to drive passenger traffic effectively, it means that you need to do a couple of things. “One, you need to either improve the business environment where there are a lot of trade activities that are happening that bring people into the country or even the economic activity, whether it is tourism, whether it is business activity. But when we start to look at the hub, we really see the future in two things. “One is in driving the hub strategy and the second is also in for both passenger and cargo. To make the hub strategy effective, a couple of things need to happen. It is not just about developing an airport or building infrastructure. “But it really requires that we look at the enablers. And what are these enablers? For example, look at the airlines. For us to be able to increase our aircraft movements and have additional points of entry, we look at the Bilateral Air Service Agreements, BASAs, that we have with other countries. “I believe that in this administration of the last three years, the Minister has actually improved the number of routes in terms of airlines that are going outside of the country and also being able to come into the Nigerian market. But what that also means is that as we start to say we are driving a hub, one, you need to make sure that there’s a transit area. Today, within the Nigerian airport, it’s quite difficult for you to transit because there’s no transit facility. And this is actually one of the things that we are doing as part of the rehabilitation work that is happening.”