News

Ogun Airport’s $800 Million Question Now Faces Ogun Taxpayers – Emmanuel Faleye

MouthpieceNGR

For years, Gateway International Airport sat quietly on the Ilishan-Remo/Iperu axis of Ogun State, a patch of undulating land that many doubted could ever host a functioning runway. Today, with an Interim Aerodrome Operational Permit in hand and an April 2026 commissioning behind it, the airport is no longer a rumour. What has now emerged, however, is a figure too large to wave away with ceremony: a reported $800 million price tag, translating to well over one trillion naira of public money. That number deserves more scrutiny than applause, Seunmanuel Faleye writes.

Every serious airport story begins with a simple question: Was this Ogun State’s money to spend this way, and did the people get value for it? The original idea, conceived during the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel, was never meant to work like this. The plan then was a public-private partnership in its truest form, where the state would hand over land as its only equity contribution, while private investors carried the full weight of financing, building and operating the airport. That model made sense. Private money moves carefully. Investors do not release hundreds of millions of dollars without exhaustive due diligence on passenger numbers, cargo potential, airline interest and a realistic path to profit. When the risk sits with investors, taxpayers sleep easy.

Somewhere along the line, that arrangement shifted and the burden moved from private capital to the public purse. That shift is the real story, and it is the one Ogun State owes its citizens a full explanation for. If more than a trillion naira of public funds has gone into a single airport, residents deserve to see exactly where it went, subhead by subhead, budget year by budget year, from 2017 to 2026. They deserve to see the procurement records, the contract sums, the names behind the companies that won the jobs, and the certificates confirming that work was actually done to the standard paid for.

Put the figure beside what similar airports have cost elsewhere in the world, and the questions grow sharper. The ANR Robinson International Airport terminal in Tobago cost about $870 million. Romania’s Henri Coanda terminal cost roughly $862 million. Jordan’s Queen Alia terminal, a major passenger facility in Amman, was built for about $800 million. Tokyo’s Haneda Terminal 2 North Satellite expansion came in around the same figure. Even Western Sydney’s new runway component, part of a much larger airport still under construction, sits close to that mark.

Compare those projects with what currently stands at Iperu:

  • A single passenger terminal, modest in scale compared with the terminals listed above;
  • One runway, whose exact length, pavement strength and aircraft category have not been fully disclosed to the public;
  • A control tower, with no public record yet of who installed it or at what cost;
  • Limited cargo-handling infrastructure, despite the airport’s agro-cargo branding; and
  • No published masterplan showing what future phases the $800 million is meant to cover.

That gap is what should worry every Ogun taxpayer. The airports it is being measured against were either full international terminals serving millions of passengers a year, or components of far larger, multi-phase developments. A bungalow-style terminal, one runway and a control tower for a sum that rivals some of the biggest terminal projects on earth is not a comparison that flatters Iperu.

Then there is the question of actual use. The state has said the airport is operational, with reports indicating that Gateway Air is running routes linking Iperu to Abuja, with onward connections to Port Harcourt, Calabar and Jos, alongside a service reportedly involving ValueJet. That is a start, but it is far from proof of commercial viability. An aerodrome permit only confirms regulatory clearance to fly. It says nothing about how many paying passengers are boarding, how much cargo is moving, or whether any airline is there because of genuine demand rather than state incentives. Until Ogun State publishes verified figures on flight frequency, passenger loads and cargo tonnage, the airport remains, commercially speaking, unproven.

None of this means Ogun was wrong to want an airport. A functioning agro-cargo hub could genuinely support the state’s farmers, manufacturers and exporters. But good intentions do not excuse a lack of transparency. If the money truly came from the public treasury, an independent forensic audit is not an insult to the state; it is the very least the citizens who footed the bill are owed. Every naira spent on the airport should be traceable to a budget line, a contract and a completed piece of work.

Ogun citizens are not against development. They are against being asked to celebrate a runway while the books remain closed. Until the audit comes, the airport’s real cost and its real worth remain an open question.