The Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Captain Rabiu Yadudu is optimistic that with the cooperation of all stakeholders including the insurance companies Aviacargo in Nigeria will receive a boost.
This is just the agency has expressed its willingness to offer its assistance in ensuring that the volume of aviacargo in Nigeria climb
the highest ladder in the statistics of international agencies record at the end of every year.
Capt. Yadudu who expressed this optimism at the just concluded CHINET Aviation and Cargo conference in Lagos said, FAAN, has all it takes to support insurance companies to partner with local airlines and cargo handlers in doing business.
He added that, with its land mass of over 18,780 hectares of land in its 22 airports, the agency has the capacity of partnering with any company to build a massive modern cargo warehouses comparable with any of such facility in the world.
“Recently, we acquired additional 12.5 hectares of land for Abuja airport, bringing the total to 31,280 hectares”.
The FAAN boss explained that, there is huge potential in a via cargo based on the statistics of five years from 2017-2021 of import and export of goods and mails.
According to him, in 2017, import and export recorded a sub-total of 168,706,874, 2018 164,938,399, 2019 172,048,640, 2020 147,470,438 and 2021, 217, 814, 39.
While the sub-total for export and import mails was 39,019595 in 2017, 2018 47,318, 513, 2019 55, 625,908, 2020 44,587,736 and 2021 74,010,178
With the grand total of export, import and mails for five of 207,726,469 in 2017, 2018 212,256,917, 2019 227,674,549, 2020 192,058,154 and 2021 291,824,571, Capt. Yadudu said, there was a 2.2% increase, 7.3% increase, 15.6% decrease and 52% increase.
“Nigeria imports more than she exports through air cargo.In 2017, about 168.7 tons of goods transited through our airports, and importation accounted for about 66% of this total, while export of goods accounted for the balance of 34%. There was a 52% increase in the total volume of goods and mails that passed through our airports in 2021 compared to 2020 data”.
He therefore advocate an Aviacargo guidelines be put in place to chart a clear way to go as this should be the next task for all since there was untapped prospects in cargo business, “as we have been unable to reduce the deficit in exporting of goods via air cargo”.
The FAAN helmsman said, the guidelines must address the way out of current challenges which are complaints of duplicity of functions among the several government agencies at the airports, multiplicity of taxes and charges, administrative bottlenecks.
Others he listed to include,” bridging the turn-around time in cargo facilitation, optimal and modern cargo infrastructure and facilities, lack of interest by local airlines in domestic cargo operations, lack of adequate insurance coverage in the cargo facilitation, lack of adequate standardization and certification of cargo items,
particularly farm produce and substandard packaging and lack of automation”.
Capt. Yadudu emphasized his optimism with a projection for the next five years of aviation cargo guideline traffic from 2023-2027 with 2021 data benchmark.
With 13 airports designated as cargo airports namely: MMIA Lagos, NAIA Abuja, MAKIA, Kano, SMICA, Owerri, PHIA, Omagwa, Margarette Ekpo
Airport, Calabar, AIIA, Enugu, Makurdi Airport,
Minna Airport, Jos Airport, Ilorin Airport, Yola Airport and Kebbi Airport, FAAN believes
partnership with various stakeholders these airports can achieve the goals.
“We believe that we proper partnership we can leverage on the land mass available in our airports, and establish world-class cargo facilities to further enhance cargo facilitations”.
“According to ACI statistics on Air Cargo, about 2.15 million metric tons of cargo transited through African airports in 2021.This was an 11.6% increase from 2020 data.
Volume of air cargo statistics by ACI shows that Nigeria is fifth in Africa in terms of metric tons of cargo for 2021.
Jomo Kenyatta Int’l Airport Kenya-363,204, Cairo Int’l Airport Egypt-333,536
Oliver Reginald Int’l Airport South Africa- 304,018, Addis Ababa Bole Int’l Airport Ethiopia- 226,417 and M/M Int’l Airport Lagos- 204,649
