Skyway Aviation Handling Company (SAHCO), one of Nigeria's two licensed ground handling groups, has put its weight behind two levers it says will decide whether Nigerian air cargo can compete: cooperation among stakeholders and investment in infrastructure.

The company's position, reported by Businessday NG, frames a structural problem rather than a short-term one. Nigeria's cargo chain links airlines, ground handlers, regulators, customs and airport operators. Each controls a piece of the cold chain, the temperature-controlled path that perishable exports must travel from farm to aircraft hold.

SAHCO argues that no single actor can fix the chain. If one link fails — a delayed customs release, a warehouse without refrigeration, a handler without adequate equipment — the exporter absorbs the cost. The company therefore calls for deliberate coordination across the chain, not isolated upgrades.

What does this change for exporters and airlines?

The practical question is whether cargo currently routed through competing hubs returns to Nigerian airports. West African perishables and general cargo now move in significant volumes through邻邻近邻近 hubs outside the country, where handling capacity and processing times are more predictable. SAHCO's argument implies that airlines will only commit freighter capacity — the dedicated cargo aircraft that set a market's export ceiling — when handlers, regulators and airport authorities deliver reliable turnaround.

Infrastructure as the binding constraint

The second half of SAHCO's case concerns physical capacity: cargo terminals, cool-chain storage, scanners and handling equipment. Without these, even coordinated stakeholders cannot lift throughput. With them, Nigeria can bid for export traffic that currently bypasses its airports.

The company's own commercial interest is obvious — it sells handling services — but the diagnosis matches what exporters and forwarders have long cited: transit times and infrastructure gaps, not demand, cap the market.

SAHCO has not published a costed investment plan or a timetable alongside the statement. What it has done is set the terms of the debate: collaboration and infrastructure, treated as one agenda rather than two. Whether regulators and airport operators take up that agenda will determine if the argument moves from position paper to capacity on the ramp.

By Sophie Lindqvist