The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, recently mulled the Fly Nigeria Act and its proposal to the Federal Executive Council (FEC). The good initiative, at least at face value, will compel public officials to patronise indigenous airlines and keep the money in the economy. As inviting as that old advocacy sounds, its immediate implementation puts the wagon before the horse.
Ideally, Keyamo and the federal government should dissipate better energy at improving the prevailing tough operating environment and nurture local operators to grow in fleet size and reliability across domestic and international routes; then, public and private citizens would naturally patronise Nigerian carriers without parliamentary fiat.
After years of advocacy by aviation stakeholders, led by the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), a think tank group of the local industry, Keyamo hopped on the train heading for the Fly Nigeria Act destination. At the 2025 ministerial press briefing in Abuja, Keyamo, a lawyer, said he was in the process of proposing the bill to the country’s highest legislative organ.
Like other advocates, the minister reckoned that the policy would improve air travel if approved by the FEC and passed into law by the National Assembly. The logic is that the Act would mandate government officials to prioritise domestic airlines for official foreign trips.
It stands to reason that most countries prioritise indigenous airlines to grow and remain in business, especially in the fiercely competitive international aviation sector. Public office holders globally travel to represent their countries, but at an exorbitant cost that severely impacts the overall cost of governance.
Partly for that reason, the United States has since 1975 enacted the Fly America Act mandating all U.S. federal government employees, their dependents, consultants, contractors, grantees, and others on government-funded trips to fly on U.S. flag airlines (not to be confused with flag carriers) and with others that they have codeshare arrangement. The policy enables the government to keep public funds in its airlines and the U.S. economy.
While it is noble and imperative for Nigerians to patronise their own, the question to ask Keyamo and the Fly Nigeria Act advocates is how many Nigerian scheduled airlines fly around the world like U.S. airlines? Air Peace is the only airline of the 11 carriers currently operating in Nigeria. Therefore, is it not much better to have multiple indigenous airlines on international routes, like the United States and others, before pushing the Fly Nigeria Act? Despite how good it sounds, the initiative will be futile unless Nigeria has multiple carriers competing on various routes in Europe, America, and the Middle East, where public officials are fond of travelling. It begins with having a strong industry and strong airlines.
However, the above speaks to a small Nigerian aviation industry or one in distress and need of a major overhaul. It is lamentable that after almost 100 years of Nigerian Aviation, the industry has no carrier that can compete with the likes of Ethiopian Airlines, EgyptAir, RwandaAir, and South African Airlines. Clearly, with domestic airlines stunted or barely surviving on domestic operations, the Minister of Aviation should pay closer attention to policy reforms.
Fundamentally, the truth is that the Nigerian aviation sector is largely not business-friendly or cost-effective for operators. The federal government once admitted that about 37 multiple taxes and charges in aviation are inconsistent with the ease of doing business agenda. It is obnoxious that nothing has been done by way of harmonisation to ease a lot of the burden on airfares and the airlines.
Second, the aviation system should be growth-oriented to promote the development of indigenous airlines and the industry at large. It is sufficient to note that every transaction in aviation is dollar-denominated. At about N1500 to $1, no airline can survive for long. The industry has advocated for a cheaper exchange rate window, tax rebates and loans at a low interest rate, but to no avail.
Thirdly, the current customer service of some of the domestic carriers leaves too little to be desired by most of the flying public. With flagrant delays and cancellations of scheduled services, their scheduled integrity and the quality of regulation they receive from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority are questionable. For instance, the NCAA reported that no fewer than 15,000 of the flights operated were delayed in 2024. Last December was hectic for air travellers as usual, despite the exorbitant airfares.
Besides the weather vicissitude, the airline’s routine complaints of poor airport infrastructure, disruption by VIP movements, and inadequate equipment and workforce, among others, should be looked at by the service providers, regulators and the supervising ministry. Airlines’ flagrant disregard for customers would neither be acceptable on the international front nor should it be entertained by government functionaries that the proposed Fly Nigeria Act aims to shoehorn into their schedule.
The Fly Nigeria, like the Fly American Act, is good. But it should ride on fixing the broken aviation industry first. No amount of window-dressing or aesthetic paintings would assuage a house without a roof or one with a defective foundation. From antecedents with the defunct Nigeria Airways, where public officeholders freely abused the privilege of jumping on the aeroplane just for the fun of it, till it ran aground, there is little guarantee that public officials increasing the traffic of Nigerian carriers will translate to growth of the industry or the airlines.
Mr Keyamo cannot guarantee that anything will change with the proposed Act. But he can be assured that a minimal improvement in the operating environment will change a lot and be worth his weight in gold in the annals of the Nigerian aviation industry.
