FG, Stakeholders’ Tangle Over Aerotropolis

Last week the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, reiterated the intention of the Buhari’s administration to kick-off the aerotropolis programme, even at the twilight of its tenure, but stakeholders have frowned at the plan to demolish agency’s facilities to make way for the project in Lagos, writes Chinedu Eze

Writing for Airport Council International (ACI), Sabrina Guerieri, in an article published online on January 31, 2019, encapsulated what aerotropolis could mean, which according to the writer, is a conglomeration of many businesses happening around the airport.

She explained that the basic premise is as such, “because many businesses rely on distant products and customers, and because we live in an age of “instant gratification,” where the airport will increasingly become the nucleus of economic activity, with land-use that connects local and global markets. In other words, the competitiveness of an aerotropolis is anchored upon aviation connectivity and its ability to move people and products rapidly around the world (Appold 2013; Hubbard 2017).”

The conception by the federal government is ideal and with the growing population, especially the ever increasing number of Nigerians that travel, the country needs to maximise the benefits offered by the air transport sector.

Quoting Greg Lindsay in his work, ‘Aerotropolis: How we will live next,’ Guerieri explained that the aerotropolis represented the logic of globalisation, noting,  “the three rules of real estate have changed from location, location, location, to accessibility, accessibility, accessibility. There’s a new metric. It’s no longer space; its time and cost. And if you look closely at the aerotropolis, what appears to be sprawl is slowly evolving into a system reducing both.”

She noted that as population, air travel and resource consumption increase, there are indications that great cities were often built where commerce and transport flourished. From land to sea to air transport, the logic follows that the cities of tomorrow will be built on and around airports. Initially aerotropolis attracted dampened in interests, but Guerieri said it has become a reality. “Examples of planned or organic aerotropolises can be found in or surrounding Amsterdam-Schiphol, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Dubai, Dusseldorf, Hong Kong, Incheon, Memphis, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Washington Dulles airports.” (Kasarda, 2015).

Benefits

Guerieri also observed that the lands around these airports have become magnets for a range of economic activities that thrive on long-distance connectivity, serving as “regional economic accelerators, crystalizing and driving business development outward for many miles. ” She said this in turn has a multiplying effect; a potential to generate huge socio-economic returns to local and national economies.  

“Airports have evolved from infrastructure providers to complex businesses that produce considerable commercial development within and well beyond their parameters. The quest to improve the passenger experience is one of the chief factors that have led the evolution of city airports into ‘airport cities’ (Kasarda, 2015). Catering to the needs of passengers, particularly within the passenger-terminal through the offering of a wide-array of consumer services, has given the airport all the commercial functions of a metropolitan center,” she further explained.

In Nigeria the first time the development of Aerotropolis was mooted under Senator Stella Oduah as the Minister of Aviation.

Shortly before she was removed as the Minister, she commended the concept as offering gilded prospects for changing the story of Nigeria’s aviation industry. She explained how such application of the concept would avail the nation’s airports of five-star hotels, housing estates, and aircraft maintenance facilities. There could also be world-class medical facilities and services as well as recreation facilities, among many other benefits.

“In specific terms, the Nigerian aerotropolis project is expected to earn for the country the admittedly impressive annual revenue of N100 billion, and provide jobs for at least 10 million Nigerians,” she projected at that time.

Citing example with the Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport in The Netherlands, which was an active aerotropolis, she said that there were over 2,000 companies and more than 58,000 people at work on its grounds at that time. Munich Airport in Germany, another active aerotropolis, had a wide complement of facilities that included a full service hospital, a full service grocery store, swimming pool, and open-air forum that serves as a concert venue.

“Africa is not left out in the parade with South Africa taking the lead. Already in April 2013, the South African city of Ekurilieni near Johannesburg hosted the World Airport Cities Conference,” she had said.

Aerotropolis Under Sirika

So, it was a familiar terrain when the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, promised that the Buhari’s administration would continue with the project. So far, he has tried to realise it under the Aviation Road Map. However, many industry stakeholders were aghast last week when he reinstated that the aviation agency headquarters would be demolished because they have become old contraception and some of them have long passed their utility. Many in the industry were asking whether the demolition was a sine qua none to realising the project in Lagos or the minister feels that if such action was not taken, the desired seriousness needed to be applied to realise the objective would not be done.

On the planned demolition of structures housing aviation offices in Lagos, which include the headquarters of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA); just as the edifice, the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB0 was demolished earlier in the year, forcing majority of the workers to relocate to Abuja, the Minister said that the offices were decrepit structures that were hitherto planned to be temporary and now should inevitably give way to the lofty aerotropolis that was aimed at transforming the aviation industry.

The minister argued that it was to have this lofty project that prompted the Buhari’s administration to want to demolish these existing structures; even at the twilight of the administration.

“I wish that it (the demolition) would happen tomorrow morning. I wish that happens tomorrow morning. This, chaos is what you want as an airport? This chaos in all of these places is it what you want for an aerotropolis, which is part of the roadmap? Don’t you want a rail link between the old domestic terminal and the new international terminal? Don’t you want that? Don’t you want pattern structures where there are cinemas, Spas, shopping malls, banks, airline offices and a befitting headquarters for Lagos?  The chaos that you have here is what you call an airport? Do you want to continue to live like this? Do you want to keep going to Dubai and come back and say wow these people have done wonderfully well? Do you want keep going to Ghana and using your phone and say, common Ghana, see Ghana? Is that what you want? So given the chance, I will demolish all the headquarters. In fact, I told somebody that I am going to demolish from where Arik used to be, Nigeria Airways, all the way to police to Aero Contractors to Bristol and something that is befitting of Lagos. Come on, this is Lagos; this is our premier airport,” he had said.

Some industry stakeholders told THISDAY that the minister knew the way the Nigerian government works, being very close to government at various levels and positions for a long time; so he knows that to drive an action, a radical step has to be taken.

Protest

Insisting that there must be ulterior motives behind the plan to demolish operating structures of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other aviation agencies in Lagos, three aviation unions, National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) and Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP), protested against the demolition and called on Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika, to put on hold plan to demolish aviation agencies offices in Lagos in a bid to pave way to aerotropolis.

The unions said the plan should be put on hold pending proper evaluation, planning and better timing. Secretary General, NUATE, Ocheme Aba, who spoke for the various unions, also called on the Federal Executive Council to halt further approvals on the airports concession programme, and indeed any other Aviation Road Map project, pending a comprehensive forensic audit of the projects undertaken up to this point.

”It is our firm belief that such audit will expose the activities so far to be wasteful of public funds, and to be tilted away from national good. This is the least the Council can do in order to redeem itself, in the face of the accusation that the Federal Executive Council has so far been railroaded into giving consent to bad deals for the Country,” Aba said.

Reacting to the planned demolition, The Director of Research, Zenith Travels and the Publicity Secretary of Aviation Round Table (ART), Olu Ohunayo said: “I do not support the demolition of these buildings. I feel there is a need to look at the reasons why those buildings are put in place. Some of those buildings are there to provide critical residence and backup for operations and emergency services at the airport. And also if you look at the assets, they can be converted to other commercial uses rather than going to demolish them, we already have 12,000 acres giving to the airport authority in Abuja, why don’t they start the aerotropolis there and let see how it goes before coming down to a place like Lagos that is already built up?

“I feel it is not an appropriate decision and the demolition of those properties should be strongly resisted. We have demolished an international airport for the expansion of the apron of a terminal building that was placed in a place where it was not supposed to be. That was wrong planning and that has put us in a dilemma, that the terminal is underutilised.  Now we want to go and run into another mistake again. We cannot continue to progress concurrently in error. We need to take a breather and allow some commercial sense and other important perspectives needed in the industry to take its course.”

Aviation Analyst, Marketing and PR Strategist, Sindy Foster, also spoke to THISDAY about the issue. According to Foster, “When I originally heard about the relocation plans, it seemed to make sense from a cost perspective given the way the industry is managed in Nigeria with a lot of political input. Which obviously isn’t the way it should be operating, but there we are.”

She noted that before the relocation demand, there was a lot of travel to Abuja for meetings with political appointees. “I wonder how much cost saving there has been? I still see similar amounts of trips between Lagos and Abuja at the expense of the public purse,” she said.  

Show Strategic Plans

In his reaction, the Managing Director, Flight and Logistics Solutions Limited, Amos Akpan, agreed with the minister that the state of infrastructure at the Murtala Mohammed airport looked disorganised, dilapidated, and chaotic.

“If they have a plan to reset the Lagos airport community to a befitting status, let us all see the plan. Show us what you want to demolish, the temporary relocation plan, the new structures you want to build, the cost, the source of the funding, the repayment plan, and the timelines. The Lagos airport business community wants to be able to establish the impact on their businesses and the future benefits of the proposed new infrastructure. We need a thought out program on the project, which we can use to rejig our business plans. We are not against new infrastructures with world-class facilities, but we are against starting and leaving it unfinished because we didn’t think it through,” Akpan said.

Industry stakeholder and Secretary General of Aviation Round Table (ART), Group Captain John Ojikutu, who spoke to THISDAY, said: “To me, the plan to demolish the FAAN and NAMA Headquarters buildings has more to do for those doing the planning than what we are being told. Aerotropolis is developed at the boundaries of the airports with urban development. The problems with the development of our airports can be attributed to keeping the NCAA out of the design and the construction of structures that can interfere with the general security of the airport.

“Building Aerotropolis within the MMA particularly at the site of the present NAMA and FAAN Headquarters and on the airport service road connecting the domestic and international terminals, now public road, will surely compromise and complicate the security of the airport. This plan needs a very serious rethink.”