Nigeria keeps building airports – but where are the passengers?

Last Thursday the governor of Zamfara, one of Nigeria’s poorest states, held a ceremony to mark the start of construction on an international airport in the state capital Gusau. “The economic benefits and multiplier effects … are quite enormous,” Dauda Lawal said. “The airport will have a tremendous impact on the ease of doing business and other social interactions [here].” Barely a month before, Alex Otti, the governor of Abia state in the south-east, had thanked federal officials for approving an airstrip project and said he would be lobbying for an upgrade to a full airport in the near future. “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step,” Otti said. Airports have been springing up around the country in recent years; for the most part absent are any concerns about the environmental impact of air travel. Nigeria already has 33 airports – all but two entirely owned by the federal or state governments – as well as 13 airstrips, four military airfields and 128 sites with helipads. Despite the proliferation in projects, the number of journeys taken by air fell last year to 15.89m, down from 16.17m in 2022. Passenger traffic is incredibly concentrated: just three airports accounted for 92% of all passenger journeys nationwide in 2022, according to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority. For some observers the rush to build airports is less about economics and more about political prestige.<br/>