Calabar, Ilorin, Maiduguri airports record zero passengers in Q1, says NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that about seven international airports in Nigeria have recorded no passengers at all in the first quarter of 2014 while Lagos and Abuja airports recorded highest.

The airports with zero patronage include International airports in Calabar, Ilorin, Kaduna, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Minna and Katsina.

However, a total of 3,416,977 passengers travelled using Nigerian airports in the first quarter of 2014. Out of this number, 2,352,224 or 68.84 per cent of them travelled locally, whereas 1,064,753 or 31.16 per cent  travelled  overseas.

Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos,  was rated the busiest airport in the country with  1,683,375 passengers or 49.27 per cent  followed by Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja,  with 907,989 passengers, or 26.57 per cent.

According to the NBS report, this was very similar to the share of 68.81 per cent  observed for domestic passenger traffic on average in 2013.

International passenger traffic is even more dominated by Lagos, with 784,479 passengers or 73.68 per cent of all overseas bound passengers passing through this airport. Abuja still ranks second, although with a lesser number of 205,740 passengers or 19.42 per cent  of the total. Only Kano and Port Harcourt international airports had portions of the total of over 1 per cent, with 37,261 passengers or 3.50 per cent of the total flying through Kano and Port Harcourt.