Stakeholders in the Nigerian avi­ation industry have called for a detailed recon­struc­tion and veri­fic­a­tion of claims that pas­sen­gers pay as many as 18 gov­ern­men­tim­posed taxes on each domestic flight ticket.

They warned that such unsub­stan­ti­ated asser­tions are fuel­ling mis­in­form­a­tion and unfairly shift­ing blame for high air­fares.

Speak­ing in an inter­view with The Guard­ian in Lagos on Monday, the Pres­id­ent of National Asso­ci­ation of Nigerian Travel Agen­cies (NANTA), Dr Yinka Folami, insisted that the con­tro­ver­sial claim was unfa­mil­iar to industry pro­fes­sion­als with dec­ades of exper­i­ence in air­fare con­struc­tion and tick­et­ing. He explained that in over 50 years of NANTA’S exist­ence, the asser­tion of 18 gov­ern­ment taxes on a single ticket was new to the asso­ci­ation, which has over 4,000 registered mem­bers.

He, however, said that the claim of 18 taxes on each ticket may not be impossible, but insisted the it required proper enquiry and decon­struc­tion.

Folami noted that NANTA prac­ti­tion­ers were trained in global tick­et­ing and fare con­struc­tion stand­ards and were there­fore well-posi­tioned to identify genu­ine gov­ern­men­tim­posed charges embed­ded in air­fares.

The NANTA Pres­id­ent warned against spec­u­la­tion, stress­ing that the nar­rat­ive around excess­ive gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion had gained trac­tion without veri­fi­able evid­ence. He added that the Nigeria Civil Avi­ation Author­ity (NCAA) had already pub­licly stated that such claims were inac­cur­ate, thereby fur­ther rein­for­cing the need for trans­par­ency and fac­tual clar­ity.

Accord­ing to him, unveri­fied claims risk mis­lead­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic and poli­cy­makers, while divert­ing atten­tion from real factors influ­en­cing ticket prices.

Folami also dis­missed sug­ges­tions that gov­ern­ment taxes were respons­ible for sea­sonal fare spikes, point­ing out that stat­utory charges do not change between low and peak travel peri­ods.

“Unfor­tu­nately, every­one has become an expert on avi­ation taxes. But lead­er­ship demands focus. Let us stop spec­u­la­tion and inter­rog­ate the con­struc­tion of these alleged 18 taxes.

“In June, a Lagos–abuja one­way ticket sells for about N100,000 or less. By Decem­ber, it jumps to between N200,000 and N250,000. Gov­ern­ment taxes did not change within that period. So, the increase can­not be attrib­uted to taxes.”

He insisted that such fare increases were a res­ult of air­line busi­ness decisions influ­enced by sea­sonal demand, not gov­ern­ment policy.

Also, com­ment­ing, travel ana­lyst, Lucky George, attrib­uted the per­sist­ent fare chal­lenge to capa­city con­straints by the Nigerian air­lines, rather than tax­a­tion.

George expressed that the Nigerian avi­ation mar­ket serves over 200 mil­lion people, yet capa­city was lim­ited, stress­ing that high fares were largely a res­ult of sup­ply fail­ing to meet demand. He argued that high prices had made air travel inac­cess­ible to a large seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, des­pite strong demand.