Olalekan Thomas is the director of Cargo Developments and Services, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, (FAAN). In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE-KORIEOCHA, he speaks on efforts the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) is making to grow air cargo exports by supporting key value chains and creating access to market. Excerpts:
The Cargo Services Directorate of FAAN was newly created by the current Minister of Aviation. What are your roles and what have you been doing since you assumed office?
Aside from what is expected of a director, I’ll be overseeing the strategy, financial oversight, capacity development and management roles. As a new director, I am starting off with dedicated employees. I started with three or four employees. Based on certain objective that has driven the directorate and has been the guiding principle for me is to bring structure to the directorate. At the moment, we are still in the process of getting employees on-board. We are still on it and I want to thank the managing director of FAAN for this. This is a key factor to start the directorate. I am here to grow air cargo. We started an infrastructure and operational audit. We want to know all we have to work with to meet certain objectives. We needed to know what we have on ground to get there. So, in terms of infrastructure, we know what we have. In terms of operations, we know where we are. We identified the gaps that we need to address to be able to achieve the objectives. These are part of my roles and it switches as well. There is also the budget. When we stated we didn’t have a budget. So, we had to work with the few employees we had at that time. Currently, I have about 50 people working with me and we also need more. Don’t forget, we met existing operations on ground and one of the first things was to see what we could do to ensure operations don’t drop. This for me was priority. Another thing was that having identified the gaps, we needed to plan to address these gaps. So, we started with a roadmap and we saw that we lacked presence in the domestic market. Also, for international, we know the volumes that we do. I see the numbers in terms of cargo imports and exports. Everyone knows we are an import country. In order to get to the president’s target of growing the economy to a trillion dollar in 2026, exports has to be boosted. We know the trade deficit and part of the plans is to say what the plan is for export drive. We know we have warehouse and some blockages in the value chain. These are what we have identified. We have different initiatives and policies which we are coming up with. My role is multifaceted. Aside from the usual management role, we have to go out of the usual mix to start creating a new structure and directorate. I started by making sure we get employees that have capacity and the know-how.
Before your arrival, the Aviacargo Committee existed. How have you been able to synergise with the committee so far?
Like I said, we started with an operational and infrastructure audit. The Aviacargo committee has been there and as you are aware, the government is a continuum. I sat down with my team and looked at what the committee was all about and what the objectives were and we found out that it aligned with our vision and objectives. The committee had a lot of people with experience. They had done a lot of work. They had reached out to a lot of people that I would have also reached out if I hadn’t leveraged their experience. Having leveraged their experience, we started engaging them again and collaborating with them. So, I reached out to them to first of all understand what they did and what was yet to be done and see it aligns with our own developmental plans. There were values we could get with engaging them. We reached out to the MD and she also saw the value in this and she encouraged us to pursue that. We kicked off about three weeks ago and there is the usual process we have to go through as regards ministry employees. We just got that sorted out. We have met some key stakeholders along the cargo value chain and they already have contacts that we don’t have. So, we are leveraging this to see how we can even give test pilot as regards moving cargoes from FAAN to market and volumes from different geo-political locations in the country. We can streamline the stakeholders’ interventions and boost exports. It is not rocket science. It is just commitment that is needed.
Speaking on collaborating with people or organisations who have expertise; there is one that comes to mind which is the committee in charge of Aviacargo Roadmap Project. What level of collaboration have you had with them?
We are the ones driving this. One of the pilot events is travelling to different geo-political locations; from farm to market. I must even add that we are working with different stakeholders. We have reached out to key stakeholders and one of the key stakeholders is the quarantine which is one of the most important stakeholders in Aviacargo. They have access to data that we do not have. The Aviacargo roadmap is also part of my development roadmap which I talked about. What we are talking here is how to boost cargo exports. So, however or whichever ways I can get it done, we have to. Aviacargo roadmap is part of our drive and we are pushing this ahead. So, the committee of the roadmap is also part of ours.
FAAN proposed a cargo village along the Ajao Estate Way and FAAN has several cargo terminals that it is building. Beyond having infrastructures, there is a need to support it with the right facilities that would drive cargo exports out of a Nigeria. In what way is FAAN pushing to site these at the right locations?
This question has been raised in different conferences that I have been to. It is a challenging issue and one that I am interested in solving. When we came on-board, we found out that we had space constraints and when a cargo village was cited at an alternative location, we hoped that the facilities you mentioned will be built to support existing infrastructures. We looked at that option and the option is still there on the table. I don’t think I have spoken with the MD on this. It remains on the table. Also, we looked at the risk factors because even within the existing terminal where we do existing cargo operations, one of the findings that came out from the audit was that even that small locations where the facilities are located, exports are not where we want them to, there are still a lot of tampering from quarantine to the warehouse, talk less of the cargo village which is on the other side of the road. These are some issues we needed to mitigate. Someone is holding on to valuable land that we could add to boosting this economy and they are not doing anything with it. In some way, the person is holding all of us to ransom. This is also ongoing and would be addressed. Some of my colleagues such as the Director of Engineering and Commercial and the necessary stakeholders are looking at that. This is the ministry and things take time. I say this every day that to be able to export and do it effectively, these are things we need to do. Aside from contributions of the stakeholders that they create within that value chain, there are certain infrastructures needed. If you look at the cargo value chain, from the produce from the farmers, we are working with stakeholders to ensure that there is compliance even at that value chain. If you move along the line, there are logistics and transportation issues. How do you get things to move from one place to the other without interference? We are talking with State governments to see how we can leverage their assistance on this. If you look at the airports, we have a number of stakeholders within the airports. There are also blockages here in terms of trade facilitation and there are a lot of laudable initiatives that are being introduced to assist. I seek help where I can get help. We welcome everyone that can assist as long as it fits into our development roadmap, I’ll take it on-board. We are working on initiatives all aimed at facilitating trade and ease of doing business. Within the airport and even to market access; there are issues. From the airlines, to the routes and the routes’ development etc, there are different stages within the value chain that needs to be worked on to boost cargo exports. We are collaborating with different people and private sector to see how we come on-board, so that we emulate models that we see when we travel, such as the size, the space and different segments within the terminal and how it flows seamlessly until they are sent out.
What’s your vision for cargo services in FAAN and Nigeria as a whole?
It is hard for me to summarise but let me just say that I want the value of the naira in my pocket to be better. I want us to contribute our own quota to the one trillion-dollar economy Nigeria is looking at attaining. One of the ways to achieve this is through exports. Importation is nice but everyone knows we are a dumping ground. We have a lot of good products in Nigeria that seem to be stifled. I visited Jos recently where someone complained about having many cows from which he extracted fresh milk. However, getting it to Lagos was almost impossible; talk less of getting it to other countries. So, if we can open up the pipe so that a lot of what we have here can go out, it would help immensely. Let us leave the international politics aside. If these livestock or produce can even get to other African countries, it is going to boost internal production, revenue, job creation, foreign exchange and bring about innovation. My vision is to open up that pipe in order to boost the economy.
The current storage of fleet on domestic routes is making cargo movements across local airport terminals slow. Cargo delivery has often been delayed recently. How do you think you can manage this situation?
Before I became the director of cargo development and services, we have managed to minimise the number of cargoes you see laying around. The minister of aviation is travelling around to ensure domestic airlines get access to aircraft. You see Air Peace and the politics they are facing just to be able to fly from Heathrow airport. We will be travelling to Moscow soon as part of the efforts to develop cargo exports. We are speaking with a new airline that is looking to commence air cargo operations. We are just looking to finish all the legal paper works to add them to existing fleet. Yes, we have issues with Aero and few other airlines, thereby deducting from the pull that we have. But I know those fleet will still be utilised for something eventually. Regardless of all of these things, there is still aircraft shortage. There is a route development effort to start with. There are ministerial management efforts being made to develop the routes so that cargo can thrive. So that if there is market in wherever it is, we can encourage airlines to come and we give them some sort of rebate. As part of what I’m doing in my own directorate, I will speak to State governments to subsidise charges for some of these airlines as an incentive for them to come. This is because the airlines are is interested in profit and we are interested in promoting export. It is a commercial activity. We want to boost exports and when it takes off, we can get to the stage where the income will be generated. When this happens, we would see the value. But for us to grow the route with airlines, we need to be involved in this. We as management would discuss amongst ourselves the form of incentive to give; whether it is landing charges, parking charges etc. The managing director has spoken about certain strategies at the moment so that we can be able to look at how to boost routes and lure airlines to come to where we know there are cargo volumes.
I can argue that we have always had a shortage of airlines and aircraft in Nigeria. Airlines will drive growth in the domestic market but there is the market to first identify. Now, we are specifically focusing on cargo markets. Before now, you load passengers in an aircraft and whatever is left; cargo is used to fill up. Now, we want to speak to State governments to push their farm produce. We would then look for who wants this produce and then create the market access. We can then speak to airlines on the volumes available for pick up and what we would give them to enable facilitation of cargoes. We would speak to the airlines to dedicate cargo planes to go to certain States where we know there are volumes and where there is market access. And when these planes are coming back, we need to find things for the planes to bring back. So that it is a two-way benefit. Right now, we have a lot of imports. This means there are things coming in but nothing going out. So, we need to change this narrative. We all need is to align with our vision to boost exports and that is why I say I get help and leverage existing knowledge to boost cargoes. I am excited and optimistic as this keeps me up at nights.
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