The Federal Government, through Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo, is working to reduce high airfares for domestic and international travel while improving airport safety and security.
Keyamo made this disclosure at the Ministerial Press Briefing on Thursday in Abuja.
He identified several factors contributing to high exorbitant fares, including limited access to affordable aircraft leasing, trapped funds of foreign airlines, and high airport taxes
He, noted that local airlines struggle to secure aircraft leases at competitive rates. As a result, they are forced into costly leasing arrangements or outright purchases, driving up operational expenses and ticket prices.
“We have domestic tickets, and we have international tickets. I talked about domestic tickets and the fact that we don’t have access to lease aircraft at a very cheap cost.
“We will only go for the very expensive option of leasing aircraft or buying aircraft. We are addressing that. We will see the results very soon with the Cape Town Convention and the Dublin Conference we are going to. The deals are coming in, so we will see the results then,” he said.
Keyamo added that the government is working with foreign airlines to address high airfare costs.
The Minister revealed that foreign airlines had deliberately inflated ticket prices for Nigerian travelers due to uncertainties about repatriating their earnings.
“We called international airlines and asked what they used to do. They said if you want to buy international tickets, you will see business class Z, grade J, different grades, but it’s all the same. One can be N2m cheaper than the other. Those ones, they opened it for countries they knew that once they sold the ticket, they could get their money immediately. But they now opened only the high fare for Nigerian passengers since the last 3-4 years,” he revealed.
He explained that airlines imposed high ticket prices on Nigerian passengers due to concerns that currency depreciation would reduce the value of their earnings before conversion to dollars.
“They said because they were taking into account inflationary rates of the money that will be trapped, they don’t know where they will get the money back, so they were building on top of it, inflationary rates, that by the time they want to get the money back, the naira may have collapsed. So instead of selling a ticket for N2m or N3m, they will sell it for 7m. Whereas Ghana will sell it for that price. Ghana is cheaper than Nigeria. This was an issue of policy.
“reverse the trend, the government is actively engaging with international airlines to ensure that fares for Nigerian passengers reflect the cleared backlog of trapped funds.
“President Bola Tinubu, being very smart on this, cleared that first. And so we called them and said, look, it was recently we called them, you have been enjoying this high price because Nigerians were paying. So by the time we cleared this thing, they were still enjoying the high fares. We said, no, you cannot continue to enjoy it. We have cleared the backlog, so you cannot continue to open up the high tickets only to Nigerian passengers,” Keyamo stated.
He said the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority is engaging with airlines to adjust their pricing while also addressing other cost-related issues, including taxation.
“So that discussion is going on now. NCAA is championing that, and I think they held a parliament with them recently on that, with one or two other factors in terms of high taxation. Our airport, they say, is the highest in Africa, their taxes,” he said.
He admitted that high government-imposed taxes at Nigerian airports contribute to expensive tickets but noted that reducing them would require collaboration with the Ministry of Finance.
