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Anambra International airport, situated at Umueri, has the longest runway of 3.7 kilometres with skeletal passenger flight operational in 2021.
Mrs Patricia Igwebuike, Commissioner for Transport, Anambra state, led a team of airport managers to the just concluded Airport Business Summit and Expo 2024 in Lagos, where she highlighted activities of the airport and efforts being made by the state government to attract more airlines into the airport. CHUKWUEMEKE IWELUNMO, was there and brings the report. Enjoy the excerpts:
Tell us how you intend to transform the Chinua Achebe International Airport in Umueri ti attract traffic to the airport?
The essence of our airport, the conception, is on cargo. At the moment, the cargo is a work in progress. We are beautifully situated because we are in Anambra. Anambra is the gateway to the southeast. And right down the street from us is the Onitsha main market. Right down the street is the Onitsha main market.
And everywhere in Anambra state is a commercial site. Every village is now a town. Some states are one-city towns or one-city states. But in Anambra, every city, every town is viable. And that viability is what necessitated the building of the airport. The building of this airport is not just something that came out of the blue. As far back as 1979, the idea of having an airport in that region was muted by the then governor of Anambra state, Jim Nwobodo.
If you check the Hansard of that era, you will see where it was mentioned that Umueri, then it was Umuleri, was the best suited place for having the airport. And it now continued, that ideology continued to the Peter Obi era and with Orient Petroleum. And it was the immediate past governor, Chief Wily Obiano,that now started to implement it.
Because the land of the Umueri people, although it was acquired, was not paid for in terms of compensation. It was that governor that paid the compensation, then implemented the construction of the airport. And the airport’s conception, as I said before, was mainly for cargo and passengers.
The cargo aspect of it was because we are a commercial state, we build, and we sell, all the statistics will tell you that most of the imports that come to the southern part of Nigeria, a great percentage of it, more than 50 per cent of it, ends in Anambra state. So that’s the concept behind the airport.
And we also, not only that we have an airport, but we also have a seaport now, the Onitsha River Port. We are in the process of finishing our feasibility study for the railway. So, the idea of Anambra is that we are keen into the national policy of transportation. So, we are not just doing our own thing, we are keying in. So, we have an airport that is ongoing now, we have a seaport. Then the railways are around the corner, then the ground transportation. So, we are talking multi-modal transportation.
This airport is already in running. How do you intend to attract airlines and other players and investors into that value chain, such that what you anticipate for the airport will be easily accomplished?
Okay, yes. What are we doing to attract footprints into the airport? We are doing quite a lot. We are talking to investors as we speak. We have more than 30 proposals for concessions and management agreements and all that. What are we doing to attract more airlines?
We have seen that there’s a lot of demand for people in Anambra, or people flying from Anambra, or intend to fly into Anambra. And we are talking to other airlines. We are talking to Ibon Air. We are talking to Value Jet. The idea of perhaps looking at the numbers, because our governor is a numbers man, to know whether do we need as a state to float an airline, or do we need to partner with an airline, because the demand is there.
The demand is there. Statistics, we are going to be three this December. And we’ve already done over 343,000 passengers. We’ve done over 5,700 flights. So the demand, anytime you want to travel, if you don’t book your ticket on time, you’ll be looking at more than 200,000, simply because there’s the demand. And that is what we will be interfacing with the other airlines to tell them that we are open for business. Yes, at the moment we have United and Airpeace. But we are open to other airlines coming into our space.
We are open to people building hotels, like yesterday the MD of FAAN. She rightfully said that we can’t just hold our hands and wait for the government, because aviation is an international business. MM2.
MM2. It’s a private company. And there’s one terminal in London, England that is privately owned by our own product. So this is the type of ideas that we need to begin to share with the public that, yes, we are going to be transparent. Yes, the Anambra Airport is state-owned.
The fact that it’s state-owned does not mean that we are not open for business. Yes, we are young. You’re telling us the second question was we have a website and all that. It’s work in progress. We come to these events. The interaction I had with Imo State and Enugu State Airports and soon to be an Ebonyi State is that we need to even come back to the region and do this type of interaction because I don’t see ourselves as in competition. I see us in complementary services. I don’t see Anambra as competition to Lagos. Its complementary services that we all share the same space. Nigeria has over 200 million, 200 million people and all of them are potential passengers, flight passengers.
So, nobody, I’m sure Lagos is not doing 200 million passengers. And even if it does, it will be overwhelmed. Therefore, anybody else can come into that space. In the UK, if you want to fly to Birmingham, you fly into Heathrow. Then you take a connecting flight. But to you, leaving this space to go there, you will be saying to yourself, you are flying directly to Birmingham. Meanwhile, you stopped over somewhere and you connected. Therefore, this Chinua Achebe Airport in Umueri can say that we are flying to London because when we fly to Lagos or Abuja, we connect and we get to London. So we are there.
And I am told, not that I am new to the aviation space, but the people that know the space, the airspace, will tell you that Umueri Airport in Miami, the airport in Florida, is eight hours direct. So by the time that is developed, you can imagine that we are open to the world. We are now in a global village. So the future is very bright and it’s complementary to everybody.
So it’s not that when you open your airport, my own will close. I am also told that the city of Dallas alone, city, not state, has ten airports and they are all viable. So the fact that we have in Enugu, we have in Anambra and we have in Delta, should not stop anybody because of the number of the volume.
And people are now wising up to taking flights. In the UK, people might have the opportunity to use the train. And they have now realized that with EasyJet and all those things, it’s cheaper to fly. So a train might say, you pay 150 one way. And EasyJet is giving you 50 pounds. Which one will you do? So we will get there. That is where we are going. The more we have in the space, the more the prices will come down. And it’s because we don’t have many airlines that the prices are exorbitant. So eventually we will get there.
Talking about viability, I want to know the incentives you have for airlines because when you develop your airport and allow airlines to come, that’s where the airport is viable. What type of incentive are you looking forward to attract new airlines?
Yes. Like I said, we have at the moment more than 30 concessionaires. They are the people that want to build hotels. The people that want to build even our cargo related things. There’s quite a lot of things that people want to, restaurants, sightseeing areas. There’s quite a lot of things, tank farms.
There’s quite a lot of things that people want to. You know we are also an oil and gas producing state. So there’s so many things in our favor. We are young. We are developing things. We are talking with a lot of people in the state, the experts. But I see the future as very bright for the airport and the state.
English (US) ·