Only 1,117 passengers used Markudi Airport last year

A total of 13.9 million air travellers used various airports in Nigeria last year, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has announced.

The General Manager, Corporate Communications of FAAN, Mr Yakubu Dati, made the disclosure in a statement.

He said that the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos had the largest passenger traffic of 6.7 million in 2013 as against 7.2 million passengers recorded at the premier gateway in 2012.

The FAAN spokesman said that Makurdi and Katsina airports, the least used by travellers, handled 1,117 and 6,325 in 2013 and 2,064 and 8,177 in 2012, respectively.

Minna Airport recorded 8,900 in 2013, compared to the 13,857 passengers recorded at the airport in 2012.

Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, had the second highest passenger traffic, recording 3.8 million passengers in 2013 as against 3.5 million passengers in 2012.

However, the Port Harcourt International Airport recorded passenger traffic of 1.2 million in both 2013 and 2012.

The Kano International Airport recorded 297,293 passengers in 2013 as against 380,045 in 2012.

He said that the management of FAAN anticipated an increase in passenger traffic across the airports in 2014 because of the re-modelling projects at the 22 airports in the country.

Overall, there was a  2.9 per cent drop in number of passengers as 14.3 million used the airports in 2012.