Travel expert and organiser of Akwaaba Travel Market, Ikechi Uko, in this interview with Chinedu Eze posits that increased domestic travel through local tourism would boost the nation’s economy. He also reasons that open sky in Africa will be to the advantage of Nigerian airlines and other regional carriers. Excerpts:
Let’s talk about the scrapping of the ministry of tourism, what do you think is the impact? And how are the people in the sector feeling about it?
The scrapping of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture is unfortunate and it was such a huge blow that the stakeholders were dumbfounded, that is why nobody seems to have found his voice to speak up. We actually don’t believe it is true, we think something is in the works because if you look back to Nigeria before the Ministry was crapped and after, you will know that the Ministry has been beneficial. I cannot speak on behalf of government for the type of Ministers they have appointed for us; or the type of director generals they have appointed. But I can see benefits of government interest in tourism. Calabar Carnival or Carnival Calabar, which is one of the biggest attractions in Nigeria today, grew out of that when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo started the Presidential Council on Tourism. And if you check since 1999 when the Ministry was created till today, you could point to things that have changed in our environment.
You could also see that the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics said that in 2010, 2011, 2012 tourism was one of the biggest employers of labour in Nigeria. If you go to Abuja you can actually attest to the fact that the largest employers of labour outside construction will be the hotels, hospitality environment. So tourism has grown in Nigeria, I know a lot of ignorant people believe that tourism is only when you have white tourists. Tourism as a business has grown in Nigeria tremendously, so for those ignorant people, I will allow them in their ignorance. But for some of us we know that tourism has employed people, has grown our economy, has employed a large number of people and should not be treated the way it has been treated. I believe that it is temporary, the government is just new; it is trying to organise itself. The government will find a need to put back a proper ministry and this time put competent people to run the Ministry and also competent people to run the parastatals.
There is always a correlation between travel and tourism, what are the benefits you think government could harness by encouraging tourism?
One of the things tourism does is that it enriches. In any environment where tourism thrives it enriches the people not just in the social aspect of it but economically. In Cross Rivers State after carnival for the next two or three months, people actually paint their houses, their hotels and buy seats, canopies for carnival and this year’s carnival was so big that it lasted for four days. So if you went on the carnival routes, you see canopies, white seats laid out, people were feasting even when the carnival hasn’t come to that area. The amount of economic impact that the carnival has brought not just in Calabar, but other small events that we do, the Christmas parties in the east, the Osun Osogbo, it is incredible. And I could also give you a personal example that we had so many foreigners who needed to fly to Calabar, but we didn’t have enough seats from airlines.
We actually approached airlines to put two extra flights, Arik changed a CRJ aircraft to a bigger, Boeing 737 aircraft: Air Peace was willing to deploy another B737 to that route. And it got to the extent that we have to move most of our people through Uyo because all the flights to Calabar were full. So you have transportation by land, you have food, you have hotel, anybody who was in Calabar on the 27th and 28th of December will know how crazy it was to get rooms. The bikers were in town and the carnival was in town. We had five people sharing a room in most hotels in Calabar. You cannot have that kind of experience if you don’t have an event with such capacity and imagine if we multiply this kind of thing in different towns in Nigeria round twelve months a year which is possible.
Every area has a capacity to grow an event at the size of Calabar carnival. Imagine how many airlines will benefit, imagine how many transport companies, tour operators, how many taxi people, restaurants that will benefit if we have Calabar carnival every month at different parts of the country. If this happens this month in Calabar, next month it is in Enugu, another month it is in Osogbo, Idanre, all across the country, it is not rocket science, it is possible. And this was created out of nothing in Cross Rivers State, so it could be done elsewhere. So the multiplier effect of such event on aviation, hospitality, is unquantifiable. We also say from the experience we had, that we could have gotten more people into Calabar if there were more seats in the flights. The bottleneck was airline access, so if there were more flights into Calabar more people would have come to Calabar. If there were more hotels more people would have come to Calabar. So the relationship between tourism event and this value chain is something that is very, very direct.
So this means that if this kind of opportunity comes more regularly Nigeria doesn’t have the capacity, because if we decide to hold this event in every part like you said. What do you suggest we do?
Now, I don’t think they are all full round the year but December is a stressful time for everybody not just because of the harmattan but because there are so many demand for seats to Owerri, Enugu, Port Harcourt and to Calabar. So you have such high demand and the limited capacity of the airlines to service everybody. Because you will not manufacture an aircraft, it is based on the fleet you have you will deploy. So if we have something like this every other month it is obvious that the capacity of the airlines will have to grow to meet that demand. So for me it will be a win-win situation, it is pleasant problems quite all right, it is something that you will wish to have, these are the kinds of problem I will want to wish to my country Nigeria. That we have such events every time and we are always looking for extra aircraft to carry people. So it is good for the airlines, it is good for the banks; it is good for everybody. And for the airports, most of our airports are not used for the most parts of the year.
And this brings in the need to always have airports across the country, then the challenge of having the right facilities, you mentioned harmattan, like this airfield lighting, don’t you think this calls for the deployment of landing aids in these airports?
The carnival and the Christmas holiday made it obvious that some airports in Nigeria need to be improved. This is because the harmattan can ground flight all through the day but at night people can land but most of these airports don’t have those landing aids. So you are only used to visual flight rules where people have to come at daytime, so we have problems with that. I cant understand why the viable airports in Nigeria don’t have those things; meanwhile, we are spending money on building airports that nobody is using, I don’t say nobody is going to use them, people will use them but make the ones that are already in use viable.
Recently, the foreign airline were complaining because of this forex issues and there is an impression by Nigerians that foreign airlines repatriate ticket sales, but it is not peculiar to Nigerian situation, every other place they operate they repatriate money to their headquarters. The psychology is that these people are repatriating money from our country, what is your idea, because you partner with all these foreign airlines and local airlines? What is your view about it?
It is like a Chinese person getting up one day and saying why are Nigerians coming to manufacture goods in China and exporting the goods to their country. That is what Nigerians are doing now. But when you look at it, one way or another, everybody gets benefit for something. Once you have allowed an airline to operate in your environment you have given him license to do business. And he is doing the business based on the fact that I have made an investment and I am going to make money. When he now makes the money and you say he can’t take his money back; that is not good business environment. If you don’t want them, then it is okay but once they are here doing business you have to allow them to take their money. They are not Nigerian airlines, we also have experienced some of that where you are having issues having to pay foreign partners, you can only pay somebody in Naira. So it helps grow the local capacity but at the same time somebody who is already playing here you can’t deny him because you have already given him the service. The money is not for nothing; it is for service rendered to Nigerians. Having rendered you the service you cannot deny him, it is not fair anywhere in the world because he has already rendered the service.
From what people are saying, is there any way government can use policies to make Nigerian airlines to begin to benefit from this; you share a work and have a benefit of it?
Yes, but there are instruments that are already being applied by airlines, they are a self-regulating environment, they have already have worked out a win-win situation. Because the airline environment is extremely competitive, so what the airlines have done is to create an environment everybody benefits. They create alliances where everybody benefits; they have also done what is called code-share where everybody benefits. So if we have advantage of high number of travellers, how we can use policy to make our airlines from this advantage is to create probably laws that say, if you are doing this number of frequency you have to have a code-share partner that is Nigerian. Which to me is the shortest way without infringing on anybody’s right. So you go into a partnership with a Nigerian airline, the Nigerian airline will help you bring people from outside to feed into your hub, which is either Lagos, Abuja or anywhere. Two, the Nigerian partner gives you part of its rights to destinations that you will not normally have, so you can enjoy fifth freedom rights based on the relationship with the Nigerian partner. So he gets benefits for the rights he brings. The shortest way will be a Fly Nigerian Act but based on what we have seen from our National Assembly, I doubt if we will ever have a Fly Nigerian Act. So government can actually offer fifth freedom rights to airlines but on the condition that they do it as code-share.
With the new government in place what are the things you are expecting in the aviation industry, in travel industry, which will enhance the sector and will also lead to Nigeria boosting its GDP from the sector?
We were in a conference somewhere in East Africa and the Ugandans want to have a national carrier, I am sure you know that there is this craze in Africa about we need our own airline. Then a respected person, I will take the liberty of mentioning his name, Aaron Munetsi of South African Airways says look, you are more profitable getting an airport than an airline. Return on investment for airport is higher than that for airlines. So a proper airport will give you more money than an airline. Airlines are always struggling, in Africa they are rarely profitable but airports even in Africa are profitable. So the first thing I will expect our new government to do is to upgrade our airports to world class standard. There are already terminals being built, integrate these terminals and improve movement in our airports. Our airports looks like a military camp where people have to go through checkpoints, salute unknown gods at every junction. So going through the international airport in peak hours in the evening is always a difficult process.
It doesn’t look like an international airport; we know we have the population of travellers. Can those two entrances at Lagos International Airport handle a million passengers? So I will expect that the first thing the government needs to do is upgrade airport infrastructure. Then the next thing is to make our local airlines viable and we do that with code-share because most of our travellers go international. So if our airlines make money, though it is the right correlation but there is nothing wrong in that, if it will help the airlines survive. So if they go into code-share and partnership it will give them the capacity to operate domestically and regionally.
Nigeria has the biggest economy in Africa and it is Nigerians that travel more in West Africa, but why is it that our airlines are not doing very well in the sub region?
In West Africa the dominant carriers are Nigerian carriers but there must have been something we are not doing right despite having control of the sub regional market; yet most of our airlines don’t thrive. Bellview was the national carrier of West Africa, Bellview was the only access to Liberia, Sierra Leone, it is the only access people have to most countries in West Africa yet Bellview couldn’t survive. And you also had a case where Nigeria Airways only had one competitor, Air Afrique and Nigerian Airways did very well on the West Coast. Today the unofficial airline for West Africa is still Arik Air, though Asky is taking over most of West Africa routes. But I still don’t understand why Nigerian airlines don’t survive based on the dominance they exact.
If you check how Emirates dominates its routes, Emirates makes all the money it wants from its routes. The routes that Ethiopian Airlines dominates, they make all the money they want from those routes. How come the routes Nigerian airlines dominate in West Africa they don’t make as much money? Or is a management thing. This is because if you check, it costs you more to travel between Nigeria and Banjul than to travel between Nigeria and London. Banjul is three hours away, UK is six hours away, but it is more expensive to fly to Gambia from Nigeria than to fly to London. Even in the same airline it is more expensive to buy a ticket to Banjul than to London. You fly here a full load yet the airline seems not to be making profit, so I think it has to be a cost structure and management practices. It has to be one of the two because if it is about the business, the business is there, so how come they do not survive? Because Asky is like five years old, it started with two aircraft, Asky is making profit; so, why are the others not making profit?
What do you think is the perception of other Africans about Nigerian airline?
I could tell you the biggest problem Nigerian airlines have is customer service. They delay flights, no apologies. It is just the normal thing that we have in Nigeria, the attitude our airlines have towards Nigerians they have carried beyond Nigeria and some of these countries, poor countries in Africa which have nothing, their own expectations are so high, they expect that anybody who comes has to play like a British Airways, Air France, so when an airline comes and you are not performing at the level of these people, they actually will exaggerate the problem which is part of what the Nigerian airlines suffer. They have problems but the problems are exaggerated some times, from my own personal experience. If a foreign carrier delays for 45 minutes it is okay but a Nigerian carrier delays for 45 minutes everybody will talk about it. It is also because we have not bordered to manage expectation. You see people have a bad image of us and we have never bordered to correct it. And we will go and reinforce it by our attitude in those places.
So there are ways we could have addressed it, I will give you a good example. Accra flight, Nigerian carriers will torture you on Accra flight. And Arik dealt with me for more than a year, I stopped flying the evening flight with Arik but in the last three months or four months, Arik has always been on time. So we will be at the airport waiting to fly another airline and Arik comes and goes on time and we are asking ourselves what happened? Now everybody slowly is going back to Arik evening flight. They just started flying on time and we changed and people moved back to the airline. Before that last four months, Arik will keep you at the airport till 11pm; Aero can keep you till midnight. The only airline that flew on time is the Ghana airline, AWA. But in the last four months Arik five o’clock flight leaves maximum 5:30pm. And the attitude of the passengers has changed. If you do the Accra route most of the time everybody will tell you Arik has changed. So all they need to do give us service and people will respond. So now everybody is back to Arik, they didn’t need to run adverts, they didn’t need to tell people, they just run on time.
Do you think this stereotype that Nigerian are arrogant, that’s how other African perceive us, is there anything we can do about it?
Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, former Foreign Affairs Minister said that Nigerian should never be apologetic about its size. That is who you are. The only thing you do is that you learn to be fair. Bluster is what makes us Nigerians. That aggression is what makes us successful but you learn to be fair, you learn to respect other people’s right. But I don’t see anything wrong in the aggression of the Nigerians; I actually count it as strength. And that is why a Nigerian can smell business even before the business appears and he runs at it. With the falling oil price what has kept the Nigerian economy strong is enterprise and this enterprise is based on the fact that the Nigerian believes he can surmount any mountain. So if a Nigerian changes and begins to accept things as they were we will lose what makes us Nigerians. I do see the negative part of it but I think the Nigerian spirit is what I expect every African to have. The Nigerian will step up to the place at any time, so there is no bolder African I have seen like the Nigerian and that to me is a strength which I expect other Africans to manifest.
But we have to learn to be fair and compassionate. You know that you are not always right and you also know that most Africans don’t like the fact that you are big and successful, so they conspire against you, what my friend calls the French body language. Long before the President Mohammadu Buhari body language I knew a lawyer who told me that he went to an international conference, the French has a body language when they don’t have any position on any issue. The French Africans don’t have position on any issue and everybody is waiting for information and once the information comes and the information either oppose Nigeria or oppose somebody, then the body language starts manifesting. Every African has an evil in him and that evil in him makes him not want to corporate with other Africans. Every Africa is poor, every part of Africa is not well developed, we are not all that exposed but the man who comes from the poorest village thinks that the other man wants something in his place. So that brings about visa restriction and you see there is nothing in your country and you are still saying you won’t allow people to pass through or things like that.
You don’t have any wealth in the first place; you need more people coming so you can grow. That is how America is growing, that is how UK grows but in Africa we reverse those rules. The most sophisticated places in the world issue more visas to Nigerians: UK, US. But if you see the poorest countries in Africa those are the ones that have problems with visa, they want to keep out other Africans. And you ask them, what are you guarding, you have nothing. You also see Nigerians act the same way; you think you are better than the other African who says so? Have you checked his life? The contentment some Africans have with the little they have, a Nigerian who has everything doesn’t have that contentment. I went to a Massai village and I saw how happy these people are in their life and my friend who was living in Dubai was asking me, do you know these people are actually happier than the people in Dubai. This is because they are content with their lives. So when the Nigerian thinks I am so, so and so, there are people who are better off in their own little way. So the problem is not the problem of the Nigerian, it is the problem of the African. The African needs to get himself out of his current mindset, the current mindset of the Africa will never give us profit or progress.
I want you to look at the passenger potential that Nigeria has and also look at open sky in Africa, are other African countries embracing open sky?
First the passenger potential for Nigeria is out of a 170 million people, if you move 10 per cent round every month, the amount of business will be huge. I learnt that the velocity of movement of business grows the economy. So if you are able to move your people, goods, services round your economy very, very well that economy will blossom. Nigeria needs to move more people around; we need to create the infrastructure to move more people around. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You look at the economies that have grown. In the past they said thanksgiving in the US was the biggest movement of human beings in the world, today it is the Chinese New Year and you could see that the Chinese economy has arrived. So it is a symbol of the growth of the economy when you are able to move a lot of people around in your country. So the capacity for growth of our economy is all over the place. Thanksgiving is in the US but now the Chinese New Year has beaten the thanksgiving for movement of people; that tells you the new economy on the ground. And you could see when Christmas happens in the South East Nigeria; that becomes the biggest economy in Nigeria at the point in time that the people are there. So this shows you that movement is vital to the growth of the economy.
Now, about Open Sky, I have a group that we call Team Africa. And Team Africa is built on the premise that there are 1.2 billion Africans, we get only 56 million tourists. France has a population of less than 80 million and they get 76 to 78 million tourists. France as a country gets more tourists than the whole of Africa put together. If we can get only 10 per cent of Africans or 20 per cent of Africans to travel within Africa, that is a 100 million people and that is a boom for all African airlines, all African hotels and all African countries. We don’t need grants any more. And because of the way travel is shaped, 80 per cent of the carriage of passengers in Africa is done by non-African carriers. If we now get more Africans to travel within Africa who will benefit? African carriers will benefit because these foreign carriers don’t fly there. So it is in the interest of Africa that we begin to grow travel within Africa. And what are the obstacles to this dream of getting more Africans to travel within Africa? The first is air access; the second is visa.
So Team Africa’s job is to first create interest in Africans wanting to know other African countries. We are doing 21 wonders of Africa for that. After creating the interest they will want to go, but how do they go when there is no air access? And if they now find a way to go, they don’t have visa, so could we make an Africa where it is easy for people to move around within Africa. So we can get a 100 million Africans moving within Africa. If we do this 100 million visitors within Africa Kenya Airways will be profitable, South Africa Airways will be profitable, Ethiopian Airlines will be more profitable, Arik Air will be profitable, Aero will be profitable, Asky will be profitable because they will be carrying Africans. So it is simple logic, which nobody sees. So, open skies is one of the solutions to Africa’s problems. Now Nigerians don’t want open skies, some Nigerian airlines, but they want open skies in West Africa so that Nigerian airlines can takeover. But these West African countries also don’t want open skies, so my question is since you have protected your environment for so long how many of your airlines have become big carriers? None. If you do a correlation between closed aviation environment and the growth of local airlines there, you will see that it is a negative relationship.
The more you close the less you have ability to grow your airlines. And what do you now have? You have more foreign carriers carrying more of your people out. So I could name all the West African countries that have tried to close their environment, you will find out that they are dominated by foreign carriers. The fact is that Nigeria has not appropriated open skies, do we have more Nigerian airlines carrying people out? No. If you check the graph, some years ago we had 80 per cent of the passengers carried by Nigerian airline and you could see that as at today we have less than two per cent. So the more we have closed our environment the less we have developed ability to compete and carry on. So in whose interest are you closing it? So anybody who is arguing against open skies has refused to see reality, he is wishing for his grandchild to raise the airline that might compete with Emirates and by then it will be something else.
The reality of the matter today is that open skies among African carriers will help the carriers, will help Africa, will help those countries. If we are able now to have open skies then the next problem is easier to solve. The next problem is the African passport, open visa. Because those airlines will put pressure on their government, like Ethiopian Airline is doing to their government to make visa available to their passengers. Kenyan Airways has an office in the embassy in Lagos, so if you buy the ticket you get a visa and now it is visa on arrive in Kenya. For Rwanda, everybody has visa on arrival. Has the Rwandan economy been overtaken by foreigners? No. Has RwandAir and Rwanda benefitted from that? Yes. So what is the fear? Rwanda gives fifth freedom to anybody who applies. What is the fear of Africans in opening up their skies and opening up their borders? Because there is no statistics, no research anywhere that supports the stupid behaviour in restricting ourselves which we are indulging in now.
So part of what we try to do in the next two years in Team Africa is to get Africans to see reality. When Nigeria opened up relationship with South Africa it benefitted the two economies and Nigerian economy actually overtook South Africa because of South Africa investment in Nigeria. So if we had shut ourselves out South Africa won’t grow, Nigeria won’t grow. But today both countries have benefitted from that relationship. So I don’t know where the people who are against open skies come from; maybe Mars. You check statistic, you check history and you check everything and nothing argues in favour of closing your environment.
