By Louis Iba

Airport City in Lagos

Originally known as the Lagos Interna­tional Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, the new ter­minal of what is today known as the Mur­tala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos, was inaugurated in March 1979. It was modelled after Am­sterdam International Airport, Schiphol, and indeed everything about the airport was to take after the beautiful and ever busy Amsterdam airport. A large expanse of land (experts say almost the size of one local government area in Lagos State) was acquired for the airport.

How sad therefore to note that more than four decades after, the lofty vision of the founders or initiators of the Lagos international airport is yet to become a re­ality. The Amsterdam airport has not only successfully served as an airport hub over the last four decades to the Dutch state and its carrier, KLM, it has in fact grown (trafficking over 58 million passengers annually) to be ranked as the fifth busi­est airport in Europe and 14 busiest in the world in terms of passenger traffic.

But despite Nigeria’s huge population and its teeming travelling populace, the MMIA is nowhere among the 100 busiest ranked airports in the world. In fact, in Af­rica, it ranks as number four with just over six million passengers traffic annually.

It is believed that nearly 50 per cent of the land acquired for the MMIA has not been properly utilised to open up the air­port with more terminals that would have created a hub and airport city out of it for the West African sub-region. Only an ad­ditional terminal has been built recently courtesy of the $500 million grant from the Chinese-Exim Bank.

What should be done?

Left dormant, a forest and stream bub­bling with wild life such as monkeys, croc­odiles, antelopes, snakes, grass cutters and fishes, have now taken over a large part of the airport.

“Till date, it is still difficult to measure the airport landmass given that left fallow for years, there has been severe encroach­ment by private and commercial devel­opers who have stopped at nothing in building even housing estates within the hitherto proposed airport,” an official told Daily Sun.

During a recent tour of the airport, the Minister of Transport, Mr. Rotimi Amae­chi, expressed disappointment over the poor utilisation of the land allotted for the airport.

He even made a joke about the poor choice of the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) sit­uated in a little corner of the local airport and insufficient to accommodate staff, while the agency had a large expanse of land enough to construct a massive and befitting edifice.

It is against this backdrop that the idea of an aerotropolis has become imperative for the full utilisation of the MMIA land­mass and even its other potentials, which can be described as inert.

What is an aerotropolis?

An aerotropolis is simply a city built around a thriving airport. The develop­ment of airport cities (aerotropolis) is a 21st Century phenomenon that is gaining ground all over the world. And we need it in Nigeria as globally, aerotropolis have now become the powerful engines for the economic development of many nations. It is assisting nations by attracting avia­tion-linked businesses of all types to their environment like manufacturing and dis­tribution facilities where distant travellers and locals alike can conduct businesses, exchange knowledge, shop, eat, sleep and be entertained without moving more than 15 minutes from the airport.

Related News

Another failed Nigerian dream

Given the importance of airport cities to the Nigerian economy where income from crude oil is diminishing by the day, the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan then earmarked the Lagos air­port, alongside three others (Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt) as viable enough for the establishment of airport cities.

“It is no longer fashionable to have an international airport like we do without the support facilities and amenities such as shopping arcades, hotels, packaging industries, residential estates, modern airline offices and recreational facilities. Our proposed aerotropolis for Nigeria will definitely boost the country’s economy and generate the much-needed employ­ment for our teeming youths,” said Stella Oduah, who was then the Minister of Aviation.

Sadly, a number of factors, among them the politicisation of the projects, inability to secure extra lands for the projects in Abuja and Kano, as well as lack of funds, stalled the take off of the proposed aer­otropolis projects in four of Nigeria’s air­ports.

But it is not too late to wake up the abandoned dream, this time under a mod­el that will incorporate both private and public sector funding.

Ideal model and inherent benefits

Daily Sun learnt that private sector in­vestors from the USA, China, and Turkey have indicated strong interest in taking up equity in Nigeria’s aerotropolis project should the government revisit it.

It was learnt that the proposed model currently with the Federal Government is for the country, through FAAN, to hold a 20 per cent equity while the remaining 80 per cent stake is to be held by private sec­tor investors.

Oduah had earlier in an interview to Daily Sun said the government would be generating an estimated N100 billion an­nually from the project, while 10 million jobs would be created for Nigerian youths in the first two years of the project coming on stream.

“The Nigeria aerotropolis project will create at least 10 million jobs for Nigeri­ans, especially the youths, in the first two years of its take-off while an estimated N100 billion will be generated annually from the initiative,” Oduah said.

“The value chains would span the ag­ricultural, health, manufacturing, culture and tourism sectors of the economy,” she added.

Investment opportunities

Should an airport city be created at the MMIA, the following investment oppor­tunities would be opened to the private sector.

Duty free shops; hangers/aircraft main­tenance facility; shopping malls; fish/agric farms; cargo management firms. Others are hotels; cargo complex/ware housing; interline offices for airlines; cold storage facilities; public gallery; conference cen­tre/multipurpose halls; database and cyber cafes; horticulture/flower gardens; car park development in flight and catering services; as well as opportunities for tour­ist and ground transport firms.