Following the official resignation of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), after alleging marginalisation from Nigeria’s President who is the Chairman of ECOWAS Bloc, stakeholders in the aviation industry have warned that the three countries may close their airspace against flights emanating from Nigeria.

The stakeholders are of the view that should the three African countries make do their threats to withdraw their membership from ECOWAS, they will likely close their airspace against Nigeria, a development that will cause adverse effect on the Nigerian economy, since the three countries occupy about 50 per cent of ECOWAS airspace.

According to them, if Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger should close their airspace against Nigeria, flights from Nigeria will have to spend extra two hours to circumvent these countries, which will be at huge cost for both scheduled, cargo and private flights going in and out of Nigeria.

Former Acting Managing Director, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Matthew Pwajok, told THISDAY that one of the ECOWAS sanctions against Niger Republic was that no flight emanating from Nigeria would land in Niger, except in special cases and it must have the approval of the National Security Adviser and the sanction was conveyed to the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA).

According to him, if these three countries withdraw from ECOWAS, Niger will want to revenge against Nigeria by closing its airspace to flights to and from Nigeria, which will cost the airlines huge amount of money and also the aviation agencies, especially NAMA, which will lose over-fliers revenue, paid in foreign currency and which is the base of the agency’s income.