Nigeria to concession MMIA, others for better efficiency

The Ministry of Aviation has disclosed the intention of the federal government to concession the terminals of Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Aminu Kano International Airport and Port Harcourt International Airport for better efficiency and management.

Hadi Sirika, the Aviation Minister disclosed this when he received four certificates of compliance or Outline Business Case (OBC) certificates on the concession of  the airport terminals, bringing the number of OBC certificates received by the ministry so far to seven.

Previously, the ministry had received the OBC on the national carrier, the Aviation Leasing Company and the Maintenance Repairs Overhaul facility (MRO).

He said with the certificates, the ministry could proceed to seek private investors for the terminals while presenting the certificates to Chidi Izuwah, Director-General Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (IRC).

He stated that the airport concession programme formed part of the Aviation Road Map earlier endorsed by President Muhammadu Buhari, further saying that a minimum of 241,700 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs would be created in the value chain at the completion of the process.

“Critical to the roadmap are the airports’ terminal concession. More than 80 per cent of the roadmap is through Public Private Partnership (PPP) and the ICRC has the sole mandate to regulate to ensure viability, fairness and diligence. “You can’t have nice airports and you don’t have a feeder primary airline to feed it. If you have the airline, it means you must have a maintenance facility (MRO) and then you need the Aviation Leasing Company for ease of leasing aircraft and other critical equipment. All of these work together to create an aviation system that is self-sustaining,” he said.