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The Federal Government of Nigeria has kick-started the concession process of the 4 major airports in the country by creating two committees: a project steering committee and a project delivery committee.

In early August, we informed that the Government of Nigeria announced it was about to launch the tender process for the four international airports under the PPP model and it was expecting to hire transaction advisors to structure the project.

The four international airports involved in the transaction are the following:

• the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos;
• Aminu Kano International Airport, located in Kano,
• Abuja airport and
• Port Harcourt International airport.

The decision to concession the airports has raised some concerns among national stakeholders in the aviation sector. They argue that concessions are more needed in other less viable airports of the country rather than in the 4 major ones. However, the intention of the Federal Government of Nigeria is to improve the infrastructure and services of these 4 airports so they can reach world class standards.

According to sources, the Project Steering Committee aims to provide policy guidelines and general direction on all matters relating to PPP and concession of projects and programs in the aviation sector.

On the other hand, the Project Delivery Committee will be in charge of the implementation of the decisions and policy guidelines as approved by the Steering Committee,  and to ensure that all the activities related to the concession are in compliance with the guidelines of the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission (ICRC).

We recently announced that the Government of Rwanda signed a public-private partnership (PPP) contract with Portugal-based construction firm Mota-Engil in order to carry out the new Bugesera International Airport project in Kigali, Rwanda.