LAAC Chairman , Suleiman Idris
When the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents gathers in Lagos on September 10 for its 30th Annual Conference, the conversation will not be about the usual industry platitudes.
Under the theme “Towards a Sustainable Aviation Industry: Balancing Government Revenue Demands with Sector Growth,” LAAC is forcing Nigeria’s aviation family to confront a question that has lingered for years: can government get the revenue it needs without choking the very sector it hopes to grow?
This year’s edition carries extra weight because it marks three decades of LAAC holding the mirror to the industry.
The hall will be full of the people who decide how aviation works in Nigeria. The Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo, SAN, is expected alongside regulators, airline chiefs, airport managers, financiers, investors, labour leaders and the correspondents who have documented the sector’s turbulence and triumphs. It is that mix that makes LAAC’s platform different, because it is not just a conference, it is a negotiation table where policy meets practice.
The timing could not be more urgent. Nigerian aviation is in the middle of reforms and big infrastructure promises, yet operators are telling a different story on the ground. Multiple charges, crippling cost of Jet A1, FX headaches for aircraft parts and leasing, the burden of maintenance, and the reality of airport infrastructure that still needs work.
At the same time, government agencies have legitimate fiscal targets and cannot afford to leave money on the table. The risk, as LAAC notes, is that revenue policies designed to fill coffers could end up making tickets unaffordable, pushing airlines to the wall, and ultimately reducing the very traffic that generates that revenue.
Chairman of LAAC, Suleiman Idris, puts it plainly. The industry cannot grow if operators are overburdened, and government cannot walk away from revenue. What is needed, he argues, is a framework that lets both breathe.
That is the conversation LAAC wants to midwife. Not another session of complaints, but a deliberate search for balance. How do you expand government earnings from aviation without killing competitiveness? How do you make airports, airlines and service providers viable while still protecting the public purse?
The answers, the conference committee believes, may lie beyond traditional passenger fares.
Shadare
Wole Shadare, chairman of the conference committee, says the discourse will push toward practical recommendations, not just diagnosis. The focus will shift to areas where Nigeria is under-monetizing aviation. Cargo development and agro-exports through airport cargo villages, tourism traffic that feeds hotels and airlines, airport commercialization that turns terminals into business hubs, MRO facilities that keep aircraft spend in-country, and aircraft leasing structures that ease capital pressure. If those value chains are unlocked, government gets a bigger, healthier revenue base, and operators get room to invest and lower costs.
That is also why the media’s role matters this year. For 30 years LAAC correspondents have reported crashes, policy flip-flops, and fare hikes.
Now, Idris says, the responsibility is to convene, to create the room where a minister, a regulator, an airline CEO and a freight forwarder can argue in public and leave with solutions. It is about accountability, but also about building consensus that survives beyond press releases.
Expect the debate in Lagos to be frank. There will be pushback on the multiplicity of charges, questions about how FAAN, NCAA, and other agencies coordinate levies, and hard data on how fuel and FX costs translate directly into airfares.
But there will also be proposals. On how to incentivize cargo, on how to make Nigerian airports attractive for MROs, on how to structure PPPs that don’t collapse under bureaucracy.
LAAC is betting that its 30th anniversary can be more than a celebration. It can be a turning point. If the conference leaves with a set of recommendations that government and industry can both live with, then the last three decades of reportage would have led to something tangible. A Nigerian aviation sector that is financially sustainable for government, commercially viable for business, and affordable for the Nigerian flying public.
In an industry where everyone agrees growth is the goal but disagrees on the price, that may be the most important conversation of the year.
