OBI TRICE EMEKA
Nigerian policymakers have long learnt to market obtuse ideas using elegant adjectives or emotive economic arguments. They are always either planning for the future or building some gigantic, innovative project that will transform their states. Of course, this never happens. The story of Nigeria is one of sunk cost, the opportunity cost that wipes out possibilities that ought to have existed for a generation.
When the administration of Willie Obiano began construction of the Anambra Airport in 2019, the Anambra State government marketed the project as transformative, one that would change the course of the state. It was billed as an aerotropolis, a cargo airport, an MRO hub, and a major refuelling hub for aircraft in Nigeria. While the total amount spent on the project remains shrouded in secrecy, estimates put it at over N10 billion. No official documents exist to verify the airport’s financial position, but statements credited to the MD of FAAN indicate that only three airports in Nigeria are profitable, and Umueri Airport isn’t one of them. The airport never became an aerotropolis, a cargo hub, an MRO, or a refuelling hub. No report has linked the airport to any significant economic impact in the state.
African development over the last four decades has been pursued through a vigorous race to close the infrastructural gap. This race has contributed enormously to the debt trap that has ensnared many African states. The underlying assumption has been that infrastructure investment automatically leads to increased productivity and income. This theory has proven largely false. During the oil windfall of the 70s and 80s, Nigeria poured its resources into infrastructural projects that became redundant and were left to rot without any commensurate benefit to the economy. Four decades later, the story repeats itself with the subsidy windfall.
Human innovation spurs productivity, not infrastructure alone. Planning for the future on such wide, untested assumptions should no longer be an experiment any leader embarks on.
Despite these obvious lessons, the Anambra State government has begun construction of a second airport even as Ndi Anambra count the opportunity cost of the Umueri Airport, which is yet to deliver any dividends four years after coming on stream. I have scoured news sources for any justification for a second airport, and none has been offered. Anambra is the second smallest state in Nigeria after Ekiti. No location in the state is more than a 45 minute drive from Umueri Airport.
The second Anambra Airport fits no economic logic. No data shows surging air passenger traffic in Anambra. According to FAAN, air passenger traffic for the whole of Nigeria increased by only 4.3% between 2024 and 2025. Anambra’s GDP has not been reported to have witnessed any corresponding surge. This begs the question: why is Anambra committing scarce resources to a second airport, creating a massive opportunity cost in human capital development? Some have portrayed the project as necessary to develop a newly planned industrial city where the airport is sited. This would have been an interesting argument, but nothing is yet known of this industrial city. The basic infrastructure that ought to underpin such a city, roads, energy sources, even the industries meant to be sited there, is yet to be put in place. Yet the airport project has proceeded in earnest while the industrial city has been left cold.
Airports and transport infrastructure do not, by themselves, boost economic activity. A viable economic activity must exist before airports and transport infrastructure become viable. Building transport infrastructure without a viable economic activity to service it will always lead to that infrastructure’s collapse. From Nigeria to Zambia to Ethiopia and across Africa, this lesson is profound. Notably, domestic air cargo makes up just 6% of the air cargo industry. If air passenger traffic has grown by only 4.3% and domestic air cargo is just 6% of Nigeria’s air cargo volume, for whom, or for what, is the second airport being built?
Public funds are limited and should be managed with care, with proper consideration for opportunity cost. Funds poorly spent become sunk and irrecoverable. Governments across Nigeria have always spent public money with little caution, partly because there are no consequences for poor investment decisions with public funds. I estimate that Nigeria loses more to sunk cost from poor choices than it does to corruption.
The Anambra State government must quickly halt investment in the second Anambra Airport. For passenger traffic and air cargo volume to increase in the state, government must design policies that make products made in the state desirable while raising the income of its residents. Gigantic infrastructure without the human capital to drive innovation will collapse. Learning from experience, the second airport can wait while government channels funds toward building the humans who will drive the sustained productivity necessary to spur economic activity in the state.
Industrial cities do not begin with airports. They begin with connecting roads and reliable energy sources.
– Obi Trice Emeka writes from Orumba