Nigeria’s 17 Million Annual Passengers Reflect Deep Infrastructure Gap, Says FAAN Chief

The Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku, has said Nigeria’s aviation sector is operating far below its potential, with only 17 million passengers recorded annually across 28 airports despite a national population exceeding 220 million.

Kuku made the disclosure this week while speaking as a panelist at the Ethiopian Aviation Forum in Addis Ababa, where she outlined the structural and financial constraints limiting growth across the country’s airport network.

“When you look at our passenger traffic, we are barely scratching the surface,” Kuku said. “We have about 17 million passengers, of which about 4.2 million are international, while the rest are domestic.”

The FAAN chief manages 22 federal government-owned airports and an additional six facilities on behalf of state governments, alongside privately operated airfields. She noted that meeting basic certification and safety standards across this network remains a constant challenge regardless of traffic volumes at individual locations.

Kuku identified infrastructure deficit and its financing as her most pressing challenge. While FAAN has achieved self-sustaining status in recent years through increased revenue generation and diversification of non-aeronautical income, she said public funding alone cannot bridge the accumulated shortfall.

“To close that gap, we really need to look to the private sector,” Kuku stated. She revealed that the Minister of Aviation recently approved a technology infrastructure upgrade deploying biometrics at domestic terminals, financed entirely through private capital.

The FAAN chief sits on the board of Airports Council International and noted that airport charges dominated discussions at the body’s most recent meeting. “As we finance this infrastructure, how do we ensure value for money? How do we ensure clarity of purpose in terms of how funding is being used and what the repayment models look like?” she asked.

Kuku said FAAN has prioritised safety-related upgrades, particularly airfield lighting and runway rehabilitation. She noted that runway pavements typically have a 15-to-20-year lifespan, but some Nigerian international airport runways have remained in service for approximately 30 years.

In the last three years, the authority has completed rehabilitation of the international runway in Lagos and is currently working on the domestic runway. Similar projects are underway at Kano and Port Harcourt airports.

Airfield lighting upgrades have also extended operating hours at five secondary airports to approximately 10 p.m., though most domestic facilities still operate on a sunrise-to-sunset schedule due to traffic levels and capacity constraints.

Drawing on her finance background, Kuku proposed a structured approach to raising capital in markets where country risk ratings constrain borrowing capacity. She cautioned against reliance on a single financing instrument.

“We have looked at various models for both managing and financing airport infrastructure. One is concessions. Another is longer-term, sustainable private equity,” she explained. “It really helps to have investors who have an interest across the entire value chain, not just airport infrastructure, but ground handling, service infrastructure, MROs, and so forth.”

She recommended modular master plans that allow airports to draw from debt and equity markets in tranches, combining development finance institution debt with domestic and international private capital. “That, to me, is the right model: a structured capital stack rather than a straitjacket commitment to one type of financing.”

Kuku cited Ethiopia’s hub-and-spoke model as a successful example of long-term aviation planning and suggested debt convertible instruments as a flexible alternative to rigid financing structures.

On the future of African airports, Kuku defined success as a seamless passenger experience enabled by practical technology. “For us in Nigeria, it has to be simple, quick, and fast: biometrics, automatic e-gates for immigration, bag-drop areas, and more airlines on our self-check-in kiosks,” she said.

Looking ahead to 2035, she identified connectivity as the key metric of success and expressed concern over the slow implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market. “SAATM is something we have been preaching for years and are still struggling to deliver,” she said, recounting a trip from Lusaka that required transit through Dubai due to limited intra-African connections.

Asked what single change she would make to airport authority operations across Africa, Kuku pointed to policy continuity and governance. “Strengthening governance structures at the management level, the board level, and at the federal government level,” she said.