The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, says the country’s aviation market is now the fourth-largest in Africa, with over 18.8 million domestic and international passengers recorded in 2025.
According to FAAN, passenger traffic grew by 11.9 per cent year-on-year in 2025, while the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos posted the fastest growth in scheduled seat capacity among Africa’s ten largest airports in September, at 24.1 per cent.
The Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Onabanjo-Kuku, disclosed this at the 2026 Airports Council International (ACI) Africa Regional Conference and Exhibition in Abuja, themed “Next-Gen Airports: Driving Performance and Resilience.”
Citing the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Onabanjo-Kuku said African airlines recorded a 6.4 per cent year-on-year rise in international passenger demand in July 2026, even as global international demand fell by 0.1 per cent over the same period. She said this showed Africa was not merely recovering alongside the rest of the world, but leading that recovery.
She added that the continent’s overall passenger demand grew by 5.2 per cent — second only to Latin America and the Caribbean, and well above the global average of 0.2 per cent — describing Nigeria as being at the forefront of that growth.
On Lagos’s main airport specifically, she noted that the ongoing rehabilitation of its oldest terminal had not slowed its capacity gains. Citing OAG data, she said Nigeria’s total scheduled airline capacity for September 2026 reached 1.19 million seats, a 37.4 per cent jump from the same period last year — the fastest growth rate among Africa’s top 10 aviation markets.
Onabanjo-Kuku also outlined priorities for sustaining the growth, stressing investment in systems such as predictive maintenance, reliable power, digital operations and data analytics, alongside operational resilience, workforce development and stronger partnerships with private investors and industry stakeholders. She argued that resilience should be treated as a built-in organisational capability rather than a reactive emergency plan, and that government funding alone cannot meet the scale of investment the sector requires.
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