Following the gradual re-opening of economic activities in Nigeria, the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu said it is at the final phase of opening local airport with plans to start an initial flight from Lagos to Abuja.
While the closure of Nigerian airports is supposed to expire by June 4, the announcement by the Governor of Nigeria’s busiest city at a virtual conference on Global Pandemic: Local Realities and Peculiarities on Friday means local airports re-open before the due date.
“We are trying to get the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 to understand that we are going to start Lagos-Abuja initial flight,” Sanwo-Olu said.
Since March 21, 2020, when President Muhammadu Buhari initially announced the closure of all Nigerian airports, there have been two different extensions of the closure.
As a result, the Nigerian aviation industry is said to be losing about N21 billion monthly, as disclosed by the Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika.
“We are the worst-hit than any other sector. Based on the trend of events the total loss is about N21 billion plus about N3 billion tangentially,” Sirika said adding that of the total losses N7 billion is from aviation agencies, N10 billion from airlines and N4 billion from ground handling while catering and others account for the remaining N3 billion loss.
On the plans to re-open the airports Sanwo-Olu acknowledged that the aviation industry in Africa’s largest economy has been largely hit by the outbreak of the novel virus, and thus, said “with the PTF, some things are local and some others are national, but assured that “we’ll continue to have engagement with all the players in that value chain and be rest assured that at the appropriate time when we see that the t’s have been crossed and the I’s have been dot, we’ll re-open.
