Our Reporter, Abuja
A governance expert, Dr. Joe Abah, has blamed the persistent rise in domestic airfares on a system that benefits airlines, aviation agencies and the federal government, while leaving consumers to bear the cost.
Abah gave the explanation in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, where he argued that claims by government officials that high ticket prices are solely the result of market forces are misleading.
According to him, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has the power to ensure fair market pricing only on the base fare of airline tickets. This, he said, has created a loophole that airlines routinely exploit.
“Airlines keep the base fare low and then load up the ticket price with items like fuel surcharge, which the NCAA cannot regulate,” Abah explained. As a result, passengers end up paying far more than the regulated portion of the fare.
Abah, who between 2013 and 2017, was the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in the Nigerian Presidency, noted that the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) can examine airfares, not to fix prices, but to ensure that they are not exploitative, collusive or unfair. However, he suggested that this power has not been fully exercised in the aviation sector.
He also pointed to the funding structure of aviation agencies as a key driver of high fares. He said the NCAA, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) are all self-funding and must charge airlines for their services.
“These charges are a percentage of what the airlines charge passengers,” he said, adding that this creates little incentive for the agencies to push for lower ticket prices, since cheaper fares would reduce their own income.
He further criticised the rising cost of governance within the agencies, noting that they can recruit as many staff as they wish and pay high salaries, with such expenses forming part of operating costs that continue to rise annually without a clear upper limit.
Abah added that the federal government also benefits from the arrangement, as aviation agencies are required to remit between 40 and 50 per cent of their revenue to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
“The higher the airlines charge, the more the agencies earn, and the more they remit to the Treasury,” he said. “Everybody is happy — airlines, aviation agencies and government.”
He stressed that consumers are the only losers in the system, as they continue to face increasingly unaffordable air travel.
Abah maintained that while government cannot directly fix ticket prices, it is not powerless. He said the authorities could bring fares down by addressing agency charges, controlling operating costs and putting consumer interests first.
“If the government wants ticket prices to come down, it knows what to do,” he said. “It is not true that government is entirely powerless because of market forces.”
