Nigeria’s Air Cargo Operations will remain Stunted without Real Sector, says Expert

If air cargo business must grow in Nigeria, the federal government must continue to encourage the manufacturing sector in order to produce goods that will meet with demands of global export business.

 

Also, domestic airlines must also seem to deliberately dedicate aircraft or operations to cargo business to also cater for importation which seems to be booming in the sub-sector currently.

Owolabi Awosan, executive vice president of Greater Washington Limited, a logistics company which has about 40 offices across Nigeria, at a conference, described Nigeria as an importation dependent company, adding that there are only a few things to take back to other countries when the cargo planes and passenger planes come into Nigeria with full loads.

According to him, although, government was already trying to encourage manufacturing, until the manufacturing sector fully takes shape and airlines cue in to the level production and importation, ‘we may only have few to carry’.

“Nigeria is a developing country, we have low cargo for export but it is just recently that government is trying to encourage manufacturing. In the next few years when the companies can manufacture and the airlines have something to carry, and we have dedicated domestic cargo planes because over 60 percent of cargo  come from the foreign countries like Dubai and others, the under carriage or cargo holes of passenger planes can’t carry the big ones which we have to distribute by road; it is when this is done that we can talk of big cargo operations in Nigeria,” he said.

Awosan also noted that there had not been no adequate awareness on cargo business adding that only a few people know that air cargo transportation remains most affordable and safest among other means of transport.

“The domestic market is a growing business coupled with emergence of e-commerce. We are number one in the domestic market because we manage most of the airlines such as Medview, Aero, Dana, DiscoveryAir and the MMA2 cargo terminal, apart from our business with Turkish airline.

“We deal in perishables, general goods, caskets, medical items such as blood specimens, we support the e-commerce as well, we use the underbelly of aircraft for delivery.

“That aside, air cargo is more valuable compared to road transport, it is faster, safer and cheaper but integrity is the bedrock of cargo business, what is also paramount to us is safety of passengers, assets and aircraft.

In this business, one must understand take-off and landing weights, if we under-declare, it can affect the lives of people on board. We also track our cargo as it moves, apart from that, everything at Bi-Courtney is computerised so there is no hiding place because Bi-Courtney just got a state-of-the-art equipment that is very useful,” he added.

Speaking on handling dangerous goods, the company says all its staff are continually trained on the detection and handling of such goods adding that about 80 percent of its workforce have one form of training or the other in dangerous items.

“We do not ferry dangerous items,” he said.

Sade Williams