…plans light rail for Lagos airport terminals
..as Keyamo highlights benefits of fuel subsidy removal
The Federal Government is expected to expand the sum of N1tr for the rebuilding of infrastructure in Nigeria’s aviation sector, Aviation and Aerospace Development Minister, Festus Keyamo has said.
He disclosed this on Monday during the celebration of Aero Contractors 67th anniversary at the airline’s headquarters in Lagos
According to Keyamo, $500 million is being expended on the reconstruction of Lagos Airport, another $500 million is also been set aside for reconstruction of runways at Port Harcourt, Akure airport terminal, Kano and other airports, apart from the ongoing construction of a second runway in Abuja Airport for N400 billion.
He also disclosed that government has approved the building of a light rail redline from Ikeja through the Murtala Muhammed Airport terminal two (MMA2) to the domestic terminal and the Lagos international terminal.
Keyamo said these infrastructure upgrades and building were possible as a result the policy of fuel subsidy removal, adding that the renewal were done without borrowing.
“This is the vision of Mr. President under the Renewed Hope agenda for the aviation sector, it is anchored on infrastructure and policy. The four major airport terminals we built, that started under Jonathan or under Yar’Adua, I can’t be sure, and that finished under Buhari, which is the Chinese terminals in Lagos, in Abuja, in Kano, and in Enugu, Port Harcourt and Enugu was done by budgetary allocation and it wasn’t finished. But these four, they were done by monies borrowed from the Chinese.
“We could not raise money to do anything in the last 50 years because there was no money. The thing we managed to do was that we borrowed money from the Chinese, and we are paying back that money.. Why was there no money? The simple reason is that all the monies we were earning in this country from oil was going to subsidies. Very simple. Our major earnings from oil went to subsidizing PMS. And not only PMS, we were also suppressing the Naira.
“People are saying now that, floating Naira is audio money, it was the audio money at that time, not now. Because if you have Naira you are buying, not at the true rate, suppressed and subsidized rates, buy fuel at the expense of infrastructure, that was the real audio money at that time. And so it affected the aviation sector too. We could not touch any major infrastructure, but in less than two years after we removed subsidies from both money and fuel, in less than two years, the President raised $500 million to rebuild Lagos. Not money borrowed because we were able to get money, our liquidity rose, our foreign reserves also rose from $3 billion to $56 billion now. And investors are rushing into the country because they now see the country as viable.”, he said.
Speaking on the multiplier effect of deferring the construction of a second runway at Abuja Airport, Keyamo said: “Why did we not build the second runway all along? The National Assembly fought that project because they. that ₦45 billion was too big to do the second runway. We could not raise ₦45 billion at that time to do the second runway. 15 years later, or maybe 20 years later, it’s now costing us nearly ₦500 billion. That is the danger of postponing the evil day.
“So, these are the policies that are positively affecting the aviation sector. The third one is that the President has approved and we have drawn the plan now to construct a red line fom the Ikeja bus stop, straight into. Tye airport terminal. This is First-class train, air-conditioned all the way to the new terminal.”, he added.
