The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company Plc (NAHCOaviance), Mrs. Olatokunbo Fagbemi has revealed that NAHCO Plc has steadily embarked on facility upgrade over the last two years with Ground Support Equipment (GSE) worth N2 billion. She revealed this during a recent webinar hosted by the Nigerian-British Chambers of Commerce (NBCC) with the theme, “Unlocking Trade and Export Opportunities in the Agricultural Sector”.
Speaking on the breadth of operations undertaken by her company, the NAHCO boss explained that NAHCO operates from sixteen stations nationwide and possesses a network that links the domestic and international airports to cities across the globe:
“We have five cargo facilities and in all these facilities, we are able to export cargo; agricultural and non agricultural produce. We have maintained all the safety and security standards over the years”, Fagbemi said.
The Director of Commercial and Business Development – NAHCO, Prince Saheed Lasisi who also spoke during the event expressed regret over untapped cargo exportation opportunities in Nigeria.
In Mr. Lasisi’s expert opinion, enormous opportunities exist in the transportation of cargo by air but most exporters are not aware they exist. As such, they miss opportunities to expand their operations.
He lamented that ever since NAHCO commenced direct cargo handling from China, the cargo aircraft come to Nigeria and return empty due to lack of cargo to be exported from the country – a situation which does not help the plan to up agricultural export which took a plunge from N60 billion in 2019 to N55.8 billion in 2020, according to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
According to the NAHCOaviance Director, his company plans to increase the exportation of cargo by 40% starting from the third quarter of 2021. He therefore solicited support from the Federal Government in this regard in order to aid the agricultural sector to be as competitive as the oil sector in terms of market shares:
“The webinar is timely as Nigeria seeks to diversify its economy away from oil, but we are yet to get our acts together on this diversification”, Lasisi said.
The NAHCO cargo facilities upgraded were those at the Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Kano airports – a project that was undertaken in a bid to counter the problem of poor infrastructural storage facilities in the country.
