The Port Harcourt International Airport: The 2015 World’s Worst Airport -By Tope Oriola

News has emerged that the Port Harcourt International Airport has been rated the 2015 “world’s worst airport”. The rating emerged from a survey of 26,000 world travelers by a travel website. This is a thoroughly deserved infamy: The Port Harcourt International Airport is a national embarrassment. It is unworthy of the City of Port Harcourt and the idea of an “airport”.

I arrived Port Harcourt in May, 2015 for a three-month Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship. I flew from Edmonton, Canada, had a change of flight in Frankfurt and continued the journey to Port Harcourt. I was excited to meet representatives of my host institution, the University of Port Harcourt. The Carnegie Fellowship was a wonderful opportunity to give back to the country in three months of activities, such as professional development workshops, curriculum development, peer-review process revamp, among others. I was really excited as I had successfully bypassed the Muritala Mohammed International Airport, which I genuinely dread for its chaos.

My excitement gave way to total misery as we approached what was supposed to serve as a terminal. There was in fact no arrival terminal; a makeshift tent similar to those used at parties in Nigeria was the arrival terminal. I looked around me to be sure that we were in the right place. There were dozens of passengers around me. I had not got lost. This had to be the airport. Amazed, I turned to a fellow passenger and asked if this was the Port Harcourt International Airport. She smiled and said “yes; just accept it as it is”. I said to her: “I refuse to hold my country to a lower standard”. It was such unimaginably bad anti-aesthetics. I did what everyone does these days: I began to take pictures of the makeshift terminal. Several passengers also began taking pictures. One of the immigration officers encouraged us to take as many pictures as possible. He said “please, take more pictures and post them online; maybe that will shame them into doing something about this place.” It was incredibly disempowering and humiliating to see my beloved country that way.

This was the twilight of the Jonathan administration. I was informed several days later that a feud between the federal government and then incumbent Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, was the reason for the abject state of the airport. The airport project was purportedly abandoned to deal with Amaechi. This speaks to how our current system is unnecessarily personalised and ends up being abused.

I was ready to return to Canada three months later. The broad spectrum of criminal harassment of passengers became clear to me. The departure terminal was much better than the arrival terminal but still extremely substandard. However, I concluded that the decadent physical infrastructure of the airport would be easier to fix than the human element of the problem. A criminal work culture has been created at the Port Harcourt Airport. That work culture is one that aggressively seeks bribes from passengers as a routine part of its daily operations. Uniformed customs and immigration officers, as well as NDLEA agents sadly embarrass themselves and the country by demanding bribes. It seemed that somehow they thought they were there to collect bribes.

Besides a dislike for human happiness and comfort as evidenced in the poor quality of the seats and dysfunctional air conditioning system, the lack of basic organisation at the airport seems to be a deliberate bribe-seeking strategy. Frustrate the passengers by making it seem that it is impossible to buy tickets, check in, etc. without going through the “boys”. There are those who would almost compulsorily “help” you with your luggage while checking in. The airline staff would give your boarding pass to one of the boys rather than you. You are guaranteed to be pulled over for extra checking if you insist on taking your luggage to the scanning area. The customs officers often select their victims carefully using subjective cues about who looks “loaded” and can presumably offer thick bribes. One customs officer demanded to see the foodstuff in my luggage claiming to have observed them on her monitor. The problem was that I had no food items in my luggage. I opened my bags and she perfunctorily examined them for a few seconds and said “oga, wetin you go give your people?

The oil capital of Nigeria and the largest city in the Niger Delta region deserves better. The Port Harcourt airport is mainly a landing site; it is barely functioning to merit the term of an “airport”. Nigerians should demand more. The people of Port Harcourt should demand that their name “Port Harcourt” be removed from the airport’s nomenclature if nothing is done about this issue. The current federal administration should probe contracts awarded for the renovation of the airport and help fix the problem.

There is also a stupefying practice of making white travelers jump the queue. It is unclear what the airport security agents hope to gain from doing that. Such persons are often surprised to be preferentially treated, rarely give them bribes and may overtime fully expect to be given priority over Nigerians. I understand this happens in banks as well. It is quite senseless and shows a disdain for the self.

Overall, between the check-in counter and actually boarding the aircraft, we went through 14 security checks by all manner of security agencies. I had never seen anything close to that in trips to Asia, Europe and North America in the last 10 years. Not a single one of the “check points” failed to demand bribes. There were simply too many people in uniform quietly going about bribe solicitation. One woman who appeared to be a supervisory security agent spoke about issues of overstaffing. She said they had to find something for them to do. That led to duplication of efforts and enormous frustration for passengers.

The ranking of the Port Harcourt International Airport as the world’s worst airport in 2015 is not one of those “Western impositions” or stereotypic representation of the developing world. There is sound basis for the ranking. The ranking merely showcases the over-analysed problems with our system or our collective failure to mint a “system”. The failure begins at the elementary school level where civics are largely absent and even many educated Nigerians have very vague ideas about the duties, rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship. Our uniformed personnel are drawn from the same school system and treat their fellow citizens with disrespect while beaming sheepishly at non-Nigerians.

The roads leading to the airport are also horrible especially after Aluu community. The roads are thought to be federal roads. Power supply was interrupted as we waited in a secure area at the airport. This comprehensive degeneracy is not peculiar to the Port Harcourt airport. The Muritala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos is not necessarily better. May God help you if you are not already on your way to the airport six or more hours before your international flight! Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport is arguably the exception to the norm.

The oil capital of Nigeria and the largest city in the Niger Delta region deserves better. The Port Harcourt airport is mainly a landing site; it is barely functioning to merit the term of an “airport”. Nigerians should demand more. The people of Port Harcourt should demand that their name “Port Harcourt” be removed from the airport’s nomenclature if nothing is done about this issue. The current federal administration should probe contracts awarded for the renovation of the airport and help fix the problem.

‘Tope Oriola is assistant professor of criminology at the University of Alberta, Canada. Twitter: @topeoriola