Captain Susan Ekpoh, a seasoned Nigerian corporate pilot, has described the Gateway International Agro-Cargo Airport in Illisan-Remo, Ogun State, as less a triumph of infrastructure and more a cautionary tale wrapped in ceremony and political theatrics. In a damning professional assessment made as a social media posting, Captain Susan noted that the Gateway International Agro-Cargo Airport runway undulates, a technical deficiency with direct and serious safety implications, and that landing at the facility shatters a pilot’s confidence.
Her remarks strike at the heart of one of Governor Dapo Abiodun’s most celebrated legacy projects, a facility that reporting around its launch placed at a capital expenditure of $800 million, though the Ogun State government has not published a fully audited cost figure or any independently verified financial breakdown.
Captain Ekpoh made her observations as part of a broader personal series in which she has been documenting her firsthand experience flying into Nigerian airports that most citizens never knew existed. The Gateway Airport, which received its Interim Aerodrome Operational Permit from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in August 2025 and commenced commercial operations in October of the same year, was among the facilities she assessed.
Her findings were direct. The runway, she said, undulates, rising and dipping unevenly rather than maintaining the consistent flat gradient that international aviation standards demand. She described the airport as one that “tests your technique,” language that in professional aviation circles carries serious weight. A runway that tests technique is a runway that introduces unpredictability into what must, by definition, be a controlled and precise operational environment.
More pointedly, Captain Ekpoh said the airport shatters your confidence as a pilot. That is not the language of mild professional dissatisfaction. That is a trained aviation professional describing infrastructure that falls demonstrably short of the standard it was certified to meet.
The gravity of Captain Ekpoh’s assessment is sharpened considerably by what regulatory authorities said about this same airport before she flew into it.
Clearly, the airport’s promotional profile is, on paper, impressive. It features a 4-kilometre runway, acclaimed as one of the longest in the West African sub-region, designed to accommodate wide-body aircraft, including the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380. It is alleged to be equipped with Category 1 approach lighting, Precision Approach Path Indicators (PAPI), and a Doppler VOR/DME navigation system. A five-storey air traffic control tower fitted with ADS-B transponders and an 82,000-square-metre apron capable of parking 20 aircraft simultaneously completes a facility that was, by every official account, world-class. Yet a professional pilot who actually landed on that runway found it undulating and confidence-shattering.
Critiques have raised pertinent questions to NCAA, NAMA, and NiMet: how does a runway that undulates to a degree that unnerves an experienced pilot pass an ICAO-standard regulatory inspection and receive an operational permit? Either the inspections were thorough, and the inspectors missed what a pilot immediately noticed on approach, or the inspections were not as rigorous as the press statements suggested, which raises questions about something far more serious. Neither answer is acceptable for agencies whose core mandate is the safety of Nigerian skies.
The financial dimension of this story compounds the concern. Reporting around the project’s launch placed the Gateway Airport’s capital expenditure at $800 million, a figure that has circulated widely in public discourse. However, the Ogun State government has not published a fully audited cost breakdown. No line-by-line accounting has been made publicly available. No verified naira equivalent has been officially confirmed. The figure exists in the public domain not because the government placed it there with transparency and accountability, but because it entered reporting and was never formally clarified.
That opacity is not a minor administrative gap. It is a breach of public trust. At whatever the true cost of this facility, the resources committed were substantial enough to deliver a runway of immaculate, internationally certified quality. That a professional pilot is describing it as technically challenging and confidence-shattering within months of commissioning demands a full public account of what was spent, what was built, and who signed off on the difference between the two.
The Ogun State government must immediately commission an independent, internationally accredited runway inspection.
Captain Susan Ekpoh did not set out to become the most consequential voice in this story. She was a pilot, flying and documenting. But in describing one undulating runway with professional honesty, she has raised questions that the Dapo Abiodun administration, the NCAA, NAMA, and NiMet must now answer clearly, publicly, and without delay.
