ABSE 2026: NCAA Unveils 8-Pillar Strategy to Curb Aviation Monopoly Abuses

 The tension between operational scale and market fairness took centre stage at the 11th Airport Business Summit and Expo (ABSE) Africa 2026 in Lagos.

 Presenting his paper, “Taming Natural Monopoly,” the Director-General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Captain Chris Najomo, laid out a pragmatic regulatory thesis: natural monopolies are an inevitable, structurally necessary component of aviation infrastructure, but their market dominance must be strictly regulated to prevent the abuse of market power.

Rather than attempting the economically impractical task of forcing fragmentation where single-source efficiency makes the most sense, the NCAA’s stance focuses on taming dominance through a newly unveiled eight-pillar framework.

Najomo stated that a natural monopoly occurs in industries where high infrastructure entry barriers and significant economies of scale mean a single provider can deliver services at a lower cost than multiple competing firms, adding that duplicating runways, terminal environments, and primary airport infrastructure within the same immediate catchment area is economically non-viable.

The high fixed costs, he said, mean single-operator infrastructure is the baseline reality.

He stated that because these monopoly operators hold immense pricing and access leverage, strict oversight is required to balance commercial viability with public interest.

The NCAA’s strategy relies on eight interconnected pillars to govern these dominant players such as implementing mechanisms to monitor and audit the financial behaviors of dominant infrastructure providers, ensuring that monopoly status does not result in degraded passenger rights, sub-standard service delivery, or poor complaint-handling mechanisms, guaranteeing that domestic and international airlines enjoy equitable, transparent, and non-discriminatory access to airport slots and facilities, curbing arbitrary or opaque pricing models on aeronautical fees to prevent operators from overcharging captive airline clients among others.

“The goal of this framework is not to penalise scale or chill private capital investment—particularly as the industry pushes toward broader commercialisation and airport concessions. The objective is to establish a highly predictable investment environment,” he stated.