To create export business in Nigeria, aircraft should be filled up with agro-allied products- John Okpaku
John Okpaku, is the Managing Director, ABX World, a major agro-allied export company in Nigeria and former representatives of Aramex International and Global Good Agricultural Practice (Global G.A.P) in Nigeria. In an interview with Ifeoma Okeke, he speaks of opportunities in agro allied business in Nigeria and challenges with Nigerian cargo airports.
What is the expected market value of the volume of agricultural products that ought to leave Nigeria for the Europe and other markets?
First of all, in terms of geographical location, Nigeria is best well located in terms of dealing with the world in agricultural products. We have the weather and the sun. Why are we not exporting? That is the question. The leading nation in Africa in terms of agricultural export is Kenya but looking at Kenya, it is far away from Europe than Nigeria. Nigeria is bigger than Kenya and has better weather. We have more educated people than Kenya. This is what brought us to what we are doing here today. We need to close this gap. We need to open the environment for our people to thrive. Talking of our potential, this is an industry of over $50billion a year; we can go as high as $500billion. I can give you a simple statistics. You have 10million Nigerians outside the shores of Nigeria spending 100dollars a week on Nigerian products. That is one million dollars a week. That is $52billion dollars a year. Why are we not doing it? Now if you take 100million people including Nigerians, spending $100 a week on our food, you are talking about half a trillion dollars a year. That’s what we are joking with.
What should Nigerian government do to correct this phenomenon?
This is one of the reasons I called the Nigerian government in terms of amnesty so that we can find a way to bring funds back to the system, so that agriculture can have access to these funds on a single digit and be able to develop ourselves. It is a very serious issue we have on our hands, we need to solve Nigerian problem and somebody has to take the lead.
What advice do you give to government on how to go about cargo airports and good cooling system so that agro allied products can be efficiently exported?
For now we have a state-of-art cooling facility built by Afolabi Taiwo at Skyways Aviation Handling Company Limited, SAHCOL. If you go to SAHCOL, the facility they have is only being used by my company. This will tell you how bad the situation in Nigeria is. In Abuja, the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company, NAHCO has some too but SAHCOL facility is more modern and well built. The reason why other people are not using it is because they do not have the structure to make use of it. There is no market or certification. The only viable cargo airport in Nigeria is Lagos airport and the only two airports in Nigeria that will be more interesting is Lagos and Abuja because if you look at the trend of aircraft manufacturing, it is changing more to the conventional cargo aircraft to more of passenger aircraft. If you look at what Boeing is doing for example, 777 aircrafts. 777,300ER, Extended Range will take about 425 passengers, their luggage and still take about 30tonnes of cargo. My aeroplane takes about 35 or 40 tonnes. This goes to show that one Boeing 777 gets rid of the cargo aircraft. So what the industry is doing now is to move towards passenger aeroplane. If you start looking at building cargo airport, then am sorry for you. You need to start looking at what will happen in the next 20years because you will not have aircraft going there. It is going to be focused more on the passenger terminal.
Are there airlines have tapped into this huge opportunity?
When Emirate ordered for 150 777ER, people were asking questions. Emirates did their work very well. They stayed ahead of a lot of airlines. If you have 100 Boeing 777 and each of them takes about 30 tonnes of cargo, you know what they mean? You do not need cargo aircraft any more. That is where the technology is going to. So, people have to start thinking ahead of time and no one is thinking about that in this nation.
Do Nigeria really need these new cargo airports springing out in various states in Nigeria?
I heard about people building airports in Nasarawa, and I just keep wondering. We need to get on with what is going on. Who will go to the cargo airport at Nasarawa? I heard the governor saying they want to tap into Abuja. Now look at the cargo statistics in Nigeria, 76% of the cargo inbound comes to Lagos, 21% goes to Port-Harcourt because of the oil related industry and 3% goes to Abuja. Is that the 3% you want to tap into? The so called 3% are more of government related contract. If the military import arms, so you tell them to go and land in Nasarawa, then back to Abuja? It doesn’t make sense. If the Central bank print money outside the country and they bring it in, so you tell them to go and land in Nasarawa? If you want to talk about cargo airport, you can talk about Enugu airport because you have cargo people there, people that will import things. If you want to focus on agricultural output, you need to think well. Some of these aircrafts, to drop and take it off can cause up can cause up to 30thousand dollars. What are they coming to take there? When these aircrafts come in and drop the cargo, they should be able to have something to go out and if they don’t, they pack up and go and the suffering goes on. So, that is where our expertise is coming from. To be able to create that out-bound business we need to fill the aircraft up with agricultural products. That will now reduce the high cost of freight inbound Nigerians are paying over the years because if you import anything from China, Europe, US, you pay for aircrafts coming in and pay for the aircraft going back because they have nothing to go out with.
How do you move perishable produce from agricultural concentrate areas to Lagos?
When you talk about agriculture, it is not only about farming, you talk about packaging, transportation amongst others. You can farm vegetable in Adamawa and bring it to Lagos, as long as you have the facility to bring it to Lagos, such as the cooling van, temperature control, good roads and obstruction by the police should be minimal. You have to look at all those areas and then start planning. Benue is the basket food of the nation but we are not getting anything out of Benue because we have not taken out time to think about how we can go about it. If you are a transporter and into logistics, then come on board, we sit and talk. Come to ABX world, we sit and talk. We have a lot of areas for people to tap into.
Ifeoma Okeke