LAGOS – Avia-cargo Roadmap Committee set up by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has decried the country’s contribution to the importation of cargo by air despite the position and the huge population of Nigeria.
This is as the Nigeria Export Customs Command, Lilypond, Apapa, Lagos, has disclosed that it earned $200 million revenue as export from the command in the first quarter of 2023, thereby making it the highest ever by the command in a quarter.
Speaking during a visit to Lilypond on Monday, Mr. Ikechi Uko, the coordinator of the committee, regretted that despite the over 200 million population of Nigeria and the highest producer of agricultural produce on the continent, the country was still ranked fifth among countries with highest exporter of agric produce in Africa.
Uko mentioned the top five exporting countries in Africa to include Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria.
He, however, said that numerous challenges, which include poor packaging among exporters, high levies from government agencies and inadequate education were responsible for low exporting rate from Nigeria.
He explained that the essence of the visit was to collaborate with the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on how to boost cargo export in the country.
According to him, the target of the committee was to grow avia-cargo in the next three years and ensure Nigeria was ranked the highest on the continent.
He said: “Nigeria doesn’t export much. In avia-cargo Nigeria is number five, number one is Kenya, number two is Egypt, number three is South Africa, four is Ethiopia and Lagos airport is number five despite the fact that we are number one in population, number one in economy and we have the largest number of travellers.
“To get Nigeria from five to number one is not something that can be done overnight. We need to find out what others did. The Lagos economy is bigger than the economy of Kenya, the population of three states is larger than Kenya, the airport in Kenya is not as big as any of our airports, their airline is not the best in Africa and why is Kenya doing better than everybody else? We found out that they have a roadmap, they have a strategy and they are implementing it.
“We produce a lot of things, 53 million tons of yam, Ghana produces only 8 million tons, but Nigeria doesn’t export yams, Ghana exports our yams and for a lot of things, they export on our behalf, they put it as produce of Ghana but we bring it from Nigeria and export. Why have we not been able to do that because we have not put in place a system that will adequately take care of the things that we produce. We produce a lot of things in this country but we are not able to sell.”
In his response, Mr. Mohammed Babandede, the Comptroller, Customs Area Command, Lilypond, Apapa, told the visiting team that the command earned $200 million revenue in Q1 2023.
He said that the plan of the command was to continue to up its earning through innovation and partnership with exporters.
“For example, your hibiscus flower from Kano cannot get to Lagos within five days because from Ogere, it will take 30-40 days to get to Apapa or Tin Can and by then this produce would have gone bad and when it gets to its destination it will be rejected. Why? Because the roads are congested.”