Experts: Nigeria must build top airlines, airports to become hubs

Lagos, Abuja to drive dual-hub plan

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By Chinelo Obogo

Aviation industry executives and stakeholders gathered yesterday in Lagos to brainstorm on how Nigeria can be transformed into one of Africa’s most lucrative aviation hubs.

The event was the Q1 2026 Business Breakfast Meeting of the Aviation Round Table (ART), which brought together critical stakeholders. The consensus that emerged from hours of deliberation was that Nigeria does not just have the potential to become a hub. Still, it has become imperative for this to be achieved, and the way forward, stakeholders insisted, is to have strong, privately owned flag carriers and world-class airport infrastructure.

Opening the session, the President of Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), Air Commodore Ademola Onitiju (retd), said Nigeria’s aviation sector is very crucial, yet it is underperforming. He said Nigeria’s aviation sector currently contributes between $1.7 billion and $2.5 billion annually to the Gross Domestic Product and has provided over 200,000 direct jobs and hundreds of thousands more indirect jobs, but stakeholders say that these figures are just a fraction of the sector’s potential.

The ART noted that Nigeria’s air travel is dominated by Abuja (32%), Lagos (29%), and Port Harcourt (10.6%), which together contribute over 70% of the sector’s GDP. With domestic passengers topping 16 million and international travelers around 3.5 million, the current infrastructure is struggling, built more for direct point-to-point flights than a true hub-and-spoke network.

He said, “The ART has consistently advocated deliberate human capital development through the strengthening of extant aviation training institutions and implementation of policies to attract global talents to address skills and knowledge gaps. We had held sessions where we suggested the creation of a business-friendly environment with low taxes, charges and tariffs, transparent regulations, strategic investment in airports, incentivised airlines and soft loans for aviation-related industries to drive innovation towards the development of world-class infrastructure. The ART had advocated the utilisation of the public-private partnership model for aviation infrastructure development. We still hold the view that funding aviation infrastructure through private-sector investments, together with government support, is the way to go.

“The ART expects a new MMIA intentionally designed to function as a regional and global hub with the capacity to handle 30 million passengers annually, connecting more than 50 airlines to more than 100 cities worldwide. We are hopeful for an airport that can seamlessly blend efficiency, technology and a terrific passenger experience. We expect an airport with a strong commitment to continuous maintenance, innovation and expansion. We are also of the view that strong consideration should be given to the open skies policy to encourage international airlines, enhance competition and connectivity.”

At the meeting, the Managing Director of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Olubunmi Kuku, who was the guest speaker, said Nigeria has one of the largest populations in Africa, is in a strategic geographic location between West and Central Africa, and has an increasing demand for air travel. She said the vision of her administration is to have a dual-hub strategy with Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja as pilots.

“We are prioritising infrastructure modernisation. This includes upgrading terminals, improving runway capacity, and deploying advanced air traffic management systems. These investments are critical to ensuring safety, reducing delays, and creating the level of efficiency expected of a global hub. Connectivity remains at the heart of our ambition. The Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development is desirous of expanding both long-haul and intra-African routes while leveraging frameworks such as the Single African Air Transport Market to liberalise air travel across the continent. Our goal is simple: to make Nigeria a natural transit point for passengers travelling within Africa and beyond.

“Also, no hub can thrive without strong flag carriers. We are committed to supporting about two Nigerian airlines to grow into national flag carriers that can drive passenger and cargo traffic through our airports. By strengthening partnerships and optimising route networks, these carriers will play a central role in our hub ecosystem. We are expanding beyond passenger traffic into cargo and logistics. By developing modern cargo terminals and cold-chain systems, and by positioning Nigeria as a hub for maintenance, repair, and overhaul services, we aim to capture greater value across the aviation value chain,” she said.

The Managing Director of Aero Contractors, Captain Ado Sanusi, brought his decades of operational experience to bear on the conversation, saying that there is a difference between an aviation hub and a mere busy airport.

“To have an aviation hub, we need strong airlines. We can look at Emirates. We can look at Ethiopia. We can look at Frankfurt. Most successful hubs have strong home-based airlines. I stand for flag carriers. I don’t think the government has any business running an airline. I believe they can create an enabling environment for airlines to thrive, and I believe that strong airlines, which we do have locally, can be given the opportunity to be flag carriers and helped by the government to ensure that they grow and become strong,” he said.

His counterpart at Ibom Air, George Uresi, concurred, saying: “A hub is not simply a big airport. An airport becomes a hub when more than 30 percent of its arriving passengers are transiting out of it. That is when you become a hub. You can be a 100-million-passenger airport and not be a hub; you would simply be doing point-to-point, origin-and-destination traffic. A hub is where between 30 percent and 90 to 95 percent of your traffic is transiting.

“One thing is the infrastructure, and another is the airline providing the connectivity, while the third is that the service must match the infrastructure. We built a brand new terminal in Lagos, with designed floors and all, and it is decidedly attractive. But you still come and encounter all the same problems you met in the old terminal, and it just defeats the purpose.

“If you are going to fly from Dakar to Mauritius, one of the choices you will make is where to transit, because there is no direct flight. If you have the choice of going via Accra or via Lagos, I can tell you now that the default setting of most people will be to go via Accra, because they will be thinking about the airport experience when they connect,” he said.

Captain Sanusi emphasised the critical importance of training and maintenance infrastructure, saying: “We need maintenance and training facilities in the aviation ecosystem. Unfortunately, Nigeria is the only country that will purchase a training device, keep it gathering dust for years, and never put it to use. We have a good simulator in Zaria, but it is not in good enough condition to use. We need a modern training facility to bring it to life and also a maintenance facility that will cater for aircraft maintenance.”

The most important issue confronting Nigeria’s hub ambitions is the structure of its airline industry, with Uresi bluntly saying that the country is suffering from ‘small airline syndrome’.

“The airlines are too small at the moment. Some have plans to grow and to grow quite fast and organically, but many are simply small, and staying small is very dangerous. You are just one slip away from leaving the business if you are small,” he said.