Title:
THE IMPACT OF LIBERALIZATION ON THE PERFORMANCE OF NIGERIA AVIATION SECTOR

Authors:
YUSUF, Hammed Agboola; IRWAN Shah Zainal Abidin; NORMIZAN Bakar

Volume - 2 Issue - 12, Pages - 5579-5603

Abstract:
Liberalizing air transport services with the aim of enhancing the performance of the aviation sector have occupied a central place in both developed and developing countries of the world. In Nigeria, particularly, liberalization of the Nigerian aviation sector was hoped to significantly improve the performance of the sector. Thus, we modeled bilateral passenger flow from Nigeria to randomly selected African countries and vice versa through the usage of gravity model in order to examine the impact of liberalization policy on Nigerian aviation sector. We also employed Airline liberalization index computed by the world Trade Organization as one of the significant explanatory parameter (variable) in our model. We find robust evidence of a positive and significant relationship between the volumes of bilateral passenger traffic and the degree of liberalization of the aviation market. An increase in the degree of liberalization was noted to impact about 26.6 percent increase in total rate of passenger's flow. Other variables in the gravity model like the rate of openness and the economic size of the countries involve were found to be statistically significant in determining bilateral passenger flow. Based on our findings that air transport liberalization will benefit both consumers and the aviation industry in Nigeria and in view of frequent problems of the sector, we recommend increasing open skies policies that permit increasing passenger carriers and competition as Necessary Avenue for optimizing aviation sector liberalization policy.

Cite this Article:

[Agboola, YUSUF H. "THE IMPACT OF LIBERALIZATION ON THE PERFORMANCE OF NIGERIA AVIATION SECTOR." International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, vol. 2, no. 12, 2017, pp. 5579-5603. December.]