By Morgan Ayitonu

Unarguably , no nation underestimates or takes for granted the administration and management of its airports for obvious reasons. Airports are gateways into a country. They are the first point of contact and the impression any visitor gets is everlasting.

Managing an airport, therefore, is a critical and strategic component of governance. That’s why skilled, well-trained and equipped personnel are the needed hands to run the airports. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is conscious of this fact. Asides the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo SAN, Tinubu painstakingly took his time to select critical minds and technocrats to manage the agencies charged with huge responsibilities to administer the nation’s airports.

In December 2023, President Tinubu appointed the egg heads to work with the Keyamo to run our airports. One of them is the Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku.

On assumption of office, Kuku hit the ground running. Amongst her avowed commitment is to change the face of the airports to an enviable fortune, improve revenue generation, overhaul and strengthen security network and, above all, make the welfare of workers a cardinal point.

Kuku is not oblivious of the fact that the aviation sector, especially the airports, are actually quite critical in functions and nature of air transportation as well as they are extremely capital-intensive to build, own and maintenance.

So, the challenge is to put on the thinking cap, strategise, devise ways and means to generate revenue to upgrade the infrastructures and give the airports face lifts. This, she began in the 22 airports managed by FAAN on behalf of the federal government of Nigeria.

In consonance with her passion and commitment, Kuku and her team has started the upgrading majority of the airports, which according to her “Require that we maintain and upgrade a critical infrastructure, which includes the airport itself, largely the terminal area, the land side, as well as the air side.

It is worth noting that most of Nigeria’s airports in the 70s and 80s and have exceeded their retention periods. The average lifespan of a typical runway is about 20 years. A number of them that have exceeded that time. Since coming on board, a marked effort is on going aimed at remediation, rehabilitation and modernisation of the runways.

The FAAN boss recently disclosed that, “We also have a number of our domestic terminals and primary airports, which you would largely know as some of our international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Kano as well.

“In terms of our secondary airports, we’re also looking at terminal infrastructure upgrades. That includes expansion of hangers, where our passengers are departing from, also improving the passenger experience. I know we’ve had quite a number of challenges with cooling systems, even very simple things like the electricity as well as the plumbing infrastructure. A lot of the funding will be going into that, of course, let’s not leave out the airside infrastructure, as I mentioned, the runways, upgrading some of the airfield lighting systems as well.
There is a plan to go into CAT-3 for some. In other instances, We’ve looked and we’ve prioritized to see where we can have CAT2.”

Already, security architecture in the airports have been overhauled, restructured and new units created in recognition of modern threats that airports face today.

When the recurring menace of touting and other illicit activities sprung up again at the airports, Kuku moved swiftly into action a few weeks ago by inaugurating a high-powered task force composed of operatives from several departments. While there have been task forces set up in the past, this time it had the full backing of the Minister of Aviation and the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

“Given the fact that the National Security Advisor is responsible for coordinating majority of the security agencies across the country, and given that they’re directly under his purview, we have met on several occasions,” she explained. “We have deployed tactics and initiatives to make sure that there’s visibility around individuals who are actually supposed to be at the airport and making sure that when they’re not supposed to be on duty, we’re managing their activities.

“We are conscious of our duties given the fact that the airports are a major gateway into the country. Over the next couple of weeks, you will be seeing additional initiatives and measures. We’re working tactically with other sister agencies and they have very severe measures in place to make sure that anyone found wanting will definitely be punished and will be leveraged based on the security agencies that they represent.

“We’ve put in measures in place to make sure that we have the right security and screening equipment where possible at most of our terminals to make sure that the prohibited materials that are being sought through are actually going through the screening machines.

“The Honorable Minister has also made provision for additional security equipment where necessary so that we can stop some of the manual searches, except the secondary searches that happens just pre-boarding but that is dependent on the country that you’re flying to.”

She added :” We’ve also launched a culture accreditation programming within FAAN, and we have tried it with all our directors here to make sure that we’re clearly leading by example. But there are also incentives that we put in place.

And I said this too, I believe, that all of the airport managers who are on board must ensure that they understand their roles as leaders, they have started to take responsibilities like they’re running an organization on their own.

So I see my airport managers as the CEOs of the airports that they run. Obviously, within reason, but they’re given the liberty to make very critical decisions. When necessary, they revert to us at the headquarters. But I think having ownership, accountability, as well as transparency within the organization are things that we can leverage to bring FAAN to bear.”

On infrastructure Kuku stated, “There is indeed a time frame. And we’ve put an implementation roadmap together where we sort of box it into short, medium, and long term. I think in the very immediate, what we’re looking for is really just the basic infrastructure. Let’s clean up the place. And we’ve started doing that.”

Lighting system in airports like the MMIA, she pointed out has improved and the immediate environment as well. “But the medium term is really where we will start to focus on larger infrastructure upgrades, expansion of the terminals. Some of that is going on right now.”

Kuku assured “We’re looking at expansion of the terminals, we’re looking over the next two to three years. So if you look at airports like Lagos, Abuja, as well as Port-Harcourt, we have started some significant rehabilitation works. But we’re working very cautiously because there were some mistakes that have also been made in the past that we are correcting.

“We are working with a consortium of consultants as well as engineers to make sure that we can actually correct some of those mistakes.”

“I want to put in mind that, in as much as we’re going to ease the experience of the average travelers, we also need to stagger some of the initiatives that are coming on board, especially with their dependencies on whether it’s external imports or things that we cannot manage locally.”

She assured that there will be dramatic improvements from a cooling perspective, what the terminals look like. There’s a continuous commitment as well around the sanitary rooms that we see within our environments, just to give you a teaser.”

Based on available data, Kuku pointed out that only three of the 22 airports are actually profitable and contribute largely to the sustenance of the airport companies.

She explained, “We’re actually cross‑subsidizing the other 19 airports today, and in most instances we will substitute or cross‑subsidize for some of the airports that are coming on board as well.

“Especially if you look at the current system where we’re contributing 50% of the revenue that we earn back into the federal coffers.

“This is indeed a major challenge for us. We are engaging with the various arms of government in terms of what we can do to sort of provide us with some relief.”

On the proliferation of airports, she cautioned that “You don’t drive passenger traffic through building new airports but by services within it and the general environment in addition to locational advantages. “What you do or what drives passenger traffic is actually the GDP growth or the economic activities. So my feedback or my comments as we have all of these new airports springing up is really to think at the bottom of the value chain. To say what are the key activities, whether it’s through trade activities, manufacturing or tourism‑related activities that can actually drive traffic into those airports.

“From our end at the FAAN, we’re engaging very closely with international organisations and, of course, with the Federal Ministry of Aviation, largely around how we can drive additional routes, both from a domestic as well as an international perspective. We’re also having conversations and putting initiatives in place to make Nigeria and certain airports within Nigeria become transit hubs.

“I know these conversations have been lingering, but the state of the infrastructure is also critical in terms of how we make these airport hubs. What that means is that we start to build a network of airports where we can push out feeders to some of the other states or to some of the other locations and start to utilise our airports. I must say very critically that if you look at the international traffic that we have today, we have, you know, close to about four million passengers traveling internationally.

“The capacity of the international terminals that we have is way above that at the five international airports.

So utilisation becomes extremely critical because it also requires us to continue to maintain this infrastructure.

And that also takes us into how we start to categorize and grade some of these airports.”

Kuku is however optimistic that there actually does exist a huge potential for cargo in Nigeria, largely because Nigeria is an import nation, especially from an air cargo perspective. Statistics indicate that about 280,000 tons of cargo have been processed through the airways, suggesting a world of possibilities and potential.

However, most of the airports that have sprung up today as well as the airports we have in place are for some other mundane reasons and may eventually constitute a drain on resources for development and growth in other sectors.

Therefore s6ates can go into partnerships in order to ensure that we’re actually citing what we deem to be cargo terminals close enough to markets or sources of products and such cargo airports should be equipped with relevant facilities and services such as cold rooms and storage, Sanitation and communication facilities to support aggregation or potentially consolidate the products for export or import.

The current effort of the Kuku led management at FAAN to re-categorise existing airports marks a crucial step in the right direction because doing so would mean leveraging the private sector a lot more leading to more jobs and intrusion of technology to accommodate our vibrant youth population and the business community.

Clearly, FAAN has in its cockpit a visionary pilot with the composure and the will to go great distances through high winds and massive storms, and raise the profile of our airports to befitting status, creating viability and sustainability while encouraging businesses and partnerships in the aviation industry to further open up the economy from that window.