There are few things worse for business growth than political interference and instability, and although the aviation community would label these things directly against the Nigerian government of late, recent findings suggest that aviation leaders need to come together and meet with the Nigerian government to find more common ground in the battle to connect the country with the rest of the globe.
This renewed highlight of Nigerian aviation comes after the shock GDP figures released at the end of last week, when Nigeria moved the base year for calculations from 1990 to 2010 which brought into the calculations much of the financial services, entertainment, IT and telecommunications sectors for the first time. The end result is an 89% increase in 2013 GDP to $509bn and a move for Nigeria into the number one African economy slot above South Africa and a move to 26th in the world. Nigeria has seen rapid Chinese-style urbanisation effect taking place over recent years that has brought with it a growth in the services sector and consumer demand. Moreover oil only accounts for 14.4% of GDP showing clearly that the economy has diversified.
It is hoped that this GDP revision will have a positive impact on potential inward investment. After all Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa by some margin and its middle class is growing rapidly. On the downside much of the North of the county remains in a near state of war with Islamic insurgents still bent on splitting the nation in two, but much of the economy is based in the cities on the coast to the south where law and order remain intact.
The aviation sector has seen relatively little of this growth mainly because Nigeria has a non-coherent, perhaps even anti-aviation policy. It is time to invest in Nigerian aviation, from MRO through to airline expansion, but the question remains: How to do so in a manner that presents a decent risk profile and gives a decent return? The location of Nigeria means direct flights to Europe, South Africa, North Africa and the US are key whilst the Middle East carriers can gain from Asia bound traffic, but there is no getting around the fact that the location of Nigeria in the world lends itself to direct point-to-point flights like no other emerging economy and this in turn means a national airline could do very well indeed if it is set-up with a low cost structure from the outset, and that would be worth investing in.