Nigerian Airports Rated Poorly In Africa

Nigeria did not move up
the ladder in latest rating by Airport Council International (ACI) as it is number six among the 10 top African airports in 2013.
This was disclosed by the Director General of ACI World, Ms Angela Gittens who nevertheless, acknowledge that many airports in the continent have recorded growth.
The highest ranking Nigerian airport in Africa is the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos and it comes behind the OR Tambo International Airport, Johanesburg, the Cairo International Airport, Egypt, Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Cape Town Airport, South Africa and King Chaka International Airport, Durban, South Africa.
Nigeria processed about 13 million passengers in 2013 and six million of these passengers travelled on international destinations, but the country is relatively the most under-developed airports among major countries in Africa.
It was learnt that the major cause of setback in airport development in Nigeria was the failure of government in Nigeria to give the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) the free hand and target to operate.
A senior official of FAAN said that there is too much politics in Nigeria’s aviation industry, so highly placed government officials try to influence things in the sector. This he said explained why the nation’s airports were left to decay for years and even when effort was made to rehabilitate them, the effort was politicised.
The Steve Oronsaye report on how to streamline government parastatals and make them more productive, had recommended that FAAN should be made autonomous by severing it from government interferences so that it would be able to build, modernise, maintain and manage its airports as it is done in other parts of the world.
According to the rating by ACI, three of South African airports are the first three airports in the continent and these include the Johanesburg airport, Cape Toron and that of Durban.