The Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivatives Company, Bismarck Rewane, has said that out of the 23 active domestic airlines in Nigeria, only five of them control 75 per cent of domestic traffic in the country.
He said this on Thursday in Lagos at the 29th edition of the annual conference of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents with the theme: ‘Financing Aviation In Nigeria: Risks, Opportunities and Prospects.
Though Rewani didn’t mention the names of the airlines, recent statistics obtained from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority indicated that Air Peace, Arik Air, Ibom Air, United Nigeria and Aero Contractors had the highest number of passenger traffic in 2024.
Rewane also lamented that domestic passenger traffic had declined for the second straight year to 11.5million in 2024, while the air transport sector contracted by 0.81 per cent in the first quarter of 2025, showing the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.
According to him, out of Nigeria’s 32 airports, only 20 were considered viable in 2024, while 92 per cent to 96 per cent of traffic flows through just four airports.
He attributed some of these challenges to poor infrastructure in the industry.
Rewani explained further that Nigeria’s aviation sector lost $3.5 billion in revenue between 2020 and 2022.
He expressed worries that while the country continued to spend billions of naira on airport operations, the traffic had continued to decline, which was not commensurate with the airport operations expenditures.
He said: “We need very strong and effective regulation for safety; concessions and Public-Private Partnerships should be prioritised for airport upgrades to aid national fiscal sustainability and avoid inefficient operations. There should be investment in local maintenance, repair and overhaul hubs.
“Government should focus on policy and regulation, not running airlines or building airports directly and policy consistency is crucial for rebuilding trust with global investors and attracting global aviation capital.”
In another development, Airline operators in Nigeria also called on the Federal Government to create special windows for the operators, which would enable them to have easy access to foreign exchange at cheaper rates.
Dr. Allen Onyema, the CEO of Air Peace, said that the airline faced a series of challenges, including infrastructure, multiple charges and paucity of foreign exchange, among others.
According to him, these aforementioned challenges limited the growth of indigenous airlines and contributed to their early deaths.
Onyema, who spoke as a member of a panel to discuss the theme of the conference, said that the Federal Government could create a special window through either the Central Bank of Nigeria or the African Development Bank.
Besides, Onyema decried that the nation’s airlines had integrity challenges due to the unpleasant experience of the past.
But, he explained that over time, the current operators had redeemed the image of the country by adhering strictly to contractual agreement and said this could only be sustained with support from the government.
He, however, lauded the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, for making dry lease of aircraft possible for the operators, after 12 years of subtle blacklisting by lessors.
He expressed that this would go a long way in easing business for the operators, while also contributing more meaningfully to the Gross Domestic Production of the nation’s economy.
