Are state-owned airports not a wasteful enterprise?

Nigeria is a country that should not experience poverty at any level starting from the local, state and federal levels in view of the God-given endowment bestowed on it and its citizens. In other words, Nigeria should have been swimming in abundance.

Sadly, despite the divine endowment, things have continued to go wrong with majority of  Nigerians living below the poverty line no thanks to mismanagement of public legacies.

Most guilty of this misnomer is the so called political class who use their positions to deceive and defraud those who voted them into office thus making life more traumatic for them.

Amongst this political class known for deceiving and defrauding are the state governments who make promises they know are not reasonable while aspiring only for them to get there and backstab them.

This brings to the fore the unreasonable manner at which some state governments embark on the construction of airports in their states under the guise of opening up their states to investors without considering the critical components involved because they have access to public funds.

There are some states that own airports today where majority of the indigenes do not even know the location talkless of boarding an aircraft from there.

To these governors, of what use is having an airport cited in their states when the indigenes on whose behalf they claim they are constructing it cannot even find good roads through where to transport their farm produce and other goods to towns.

Most of the airports constructed under this strategy according to history have ended up becoming wasteful ventures as they are abandoned afterwards with no flight activities taking place there.

From information gathered, some of these state airports have not witnessed a flight operation in the last one year while the capital intensive facilities installed there are gradually wasting away.

Many have argued that the insistence of some governors to construct airports in their states despite the obvious fact that they cannot even meet their statutory obligations to the people of their states can only be traced to their desperate moves to use the opportunity to amass illegal wealth to loot public treasury.

While most of these airports are only active when the principal actor is still in government, the story changes as soon as another government comes in with a different focus.

The only time the affected state-owned airports experience take off and landing is during the hajj exercise or during chartered flights often enjoyed by the governor or his VIPs.

Without much ado, there is no point for any governor to dabble into airport construction as such project is used as a draining pipe for defrauding public funds.

The worst scenario is that when such airports become moribund, the burden of managing them is eventually pushed to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the government organisation responsible for managing airports which subsequently add to the pressure on state of airports in the country.

At this juncture, there is an urgent need for the relevant aviation authorities to come up with rules and stipulations guiding against building state-owned airports.

Such rules and regulations should oppose the use of political or ethnic interest as a reason for building airports by state governments.

The need to do this becomes imperative in view of the failure of the state airports built by the governors/politicians.

The governors and the politicians should be warned to start politicising critical issues like airports in view of the global and recommended standard practices attached to the building and maintenance of airports.