The desire to see the Yakabu Gowon Airport, Jos return back to its glorious days of bustling airport activities, especially in the export of fresh farm produce from the terminal might be around the corner, following a visitation of the Aviacargo Roadmap Committee to the airport.
The visitation which is one among many made to various governmental and private laboratories, cargo terminals, is part of the process of identifying bottlenecks in the country’s cargo sector that inhibit agro-export, in a bid to proffer solutions that will facilitate a seamless operation.
Speaking during the visit, Airport Manager, Yakabu Gowon Airport, Jos, Rindap Nantim, said the visitation of the aviacargo team marked the beginning of good things to come in terms of exporting agricultural produce from the terminal.
He noted that the desire of the people of Jos and the government is to see the airport return back to its glorious days and to become the export hub in north central of the country.
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Nantim lamented that despite having the facilitate and exportable produce for export that could drive economic growth in the state and the country at large, the Jos airport is still a shadow of itself.
He pointed out that the airport was a beehive of activities in time past, as fresh rose flowers, fresh milk and meat from Bauchi, other agricultural produces were exported from the terminal.
He said: “It is a privilege for us to have this team in the airport. I think our dream is becoming true. In our last year management retreat in Kano, one of the things that I discussed has to do with cargo development in this airport and I am happy that a team has been sent to this airport to carry out an assessment of the possibility or the workability of the project.
“Whatever advise you have to give, we are going to make sure we implement it and ensure that we make the dream of Jos airport becoming a cargo hub of the north central a reality. Retrospectively, looking at the airport, in the 90s, a lot of cargo were lifted from this airport. The Helena Farms did a lot of cargo operations between 1994 and 1995, especially with regards to fresh rose flowers. They were flown out of Jos airport to London. Fresh meat from Bauchi and fresh milk were lifted from here. Then we had night stops that usually airlift these products from here to Lagos and from there they are delivered. But today the airport is a ghost town of itself.”
“It is not because the facilities or the resources are not there, but nobody has come to encourage the would-be investors to embark on facilitating export from the airport. Last year, the Plateau State Government property and investment company came with investors from South Africa to explore the possibility of establishing a cargo warehouse in the airport. We had discussions with the consultant from South Africa and they did promise that they would do something about it. But now, since it is the initiative of FAAN and other organizations, I think it is going to drive the whole project to its logical conclusion.
Responding, the Coordinator Aviacargo Roadmap Committee, Mr Ikechi Uko, said part of the committee’s visit to Jos is to understand why export of produce from the airport ceased despite having lots of produce which the state has in abundance.
He stated that Nigeria is currently at number five in aviacargo in the Africa, noting that it would be difficult to take the country to number one spot without bring back Jos to its position of glory.
“We are in Jos for two reasons, one is to find out what went wrong with the export of farm product and other products from the airport. The second reason is what lessons can we learn from it and reverse the trend. We are also here to create a business for aviacargo in Nigeria and to make Nigeria number in Africa. We are presently at number 5. It is not possible for us to become number one if we do not bring back Jos to its position of glory. At the end of the day, we would like to know why the airport that is known for the export of fresh produce is no more playing that role. We want to know why it was successful before and what has gone wrong. How can we mitigate it and bring back its glory and even make it bigger.” He said.
