The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the crash of airports revenue to as low as three per cent, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria stated on Thursday.
Managing Director, FAAN, Capt. Rabiu Yadudu, stated this while speaking on the side-lines of the 2020 best performing staff award organised by the agency in Abuja.
Yadudu said air travel was almost brought to a halt for most part of 2020, adding that that the agency was badly hit but had to find ways to survive.
He said, “For a significant part of 2020, the aviation industry was grounded to a halt.
“Air travel was grounded to almost zero and our revenue was down for over 10 months to between three to five per cent.
“So when you are a revenue generation agency and you fund most of your activities, it is almost like a death sentence. But we survived through a lot of hard work and improvisation.
“We tried to cut cost and ensure that the standards are maintained, as well as embarked on trainings to get our personnel prepared to protect stakeholders who work and use our facilities.”
The FAAN boss stated that these measures paid off as it prevented the agency from failing in the delivery of air facilitation services at the about 22 airports across the country under the management of FAAN.
“With the revenue down, it became clear that we have to do a lot to ensure our survival. So as the government was helping us, the trainings we did and the confidence we inspired in our stakeholders helped us to rise through most of the storm,” Yadudu stated.
He added, “There is still COVID-19, although we now have the vaccines and a lot of understanding of the virus itself, but even now, our revenue is just about 30 to 35 per cent. So we are still in financial distress.”
