The Nigerian aviation industry is losing a significant share of its aircraft maintenance spending to overseas facilities, with local airlines still forced to send aircraft and components abroad for maintenance work that domestic capacity cannot yet fully support.
The dependence is creating a double cost for Nigerian carriers including foreign exchange outflows for maintenance services and the temporary loss of aircraft from already lean operating fleets.
Allen Onyema, chairman of Air Peace, said at the groundbreaking of the airline’s new maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in Lagos in September 2025 that Nigerian airlines were spending more than N180 billion annually on offshore aircraft maintenance.
The scale of the spending highlights an underdeveloped segment of Nigeria’s aviation value chain, even as the country has approved local maintenance organisations capable of carrying out some maintenance, overhaul, modification, repair and inspection work.
The bigger economic question is therefore not whether Nigeria has aircraft maintenance facilities, but how much of the work currently performed abroad can be brought home as local MRO capacity expands.
Foreign maintenance comes with hidden airline costs
For airlines operating relatively small fleets, sending an aircraft overseas for heavy maintenance can have consequences beyond the cost of the engineering work.
An aircraft undergoing major maintenance is unavailable for commercial operations for the duration of the work. Where a carrier has only a limited number of aircraft, removing one from service can put additional pressure on the rest of the fleet and complicate efforts to maintain schedules. This makes local MRO capacity strategically important for Nigerian airlines.
A maintenance facility located in Nigeria could potentially reduce the time and cost associated with ferrying aircraft abroad, while allowing airlines to return aircraft to service without the additional logistical burden associated with overseas maintenance.
However, the extent to which this can happen depends on the capability and certification of domestic facilities.
Local facilities cannot yet cover the full market
The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) permits approved maintenance organisations in Nigeria to undertake a range of aircraft and component work. But certification is not synonymous with universal capability.
Aircraft maintenance requires specialised tooling, equipment, highly trained engineers and technicians, technical data and regulatory approvals covering specific aircraft types, engines and components.
A facility may therefore be authorised to perform certain categories of work while lacking the approvals or technical capability required for more complex maintenance or particular aircraft types.
Where the required work falls outside the scope of an approved Nigerian facility, airlines must continue to use an approved maintenance organisation in another country.
This explains why the presence of domestic MRO operators has not yet eliminated Nigeria’s reliance on overseas maintenance.
Air Peace facility raises local-content stakes
The planned expansion of Nigeria’s MRO infrastructure could begin to change that equation.
Air Peace broke ground in September 2025 on a 34,000-square-metre MRO facility at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.
The project includes a 6,200-square-metre hangar, workshops, warehouse facilities, offices and aircraft parking infrastructure.
The Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development said the project is being developed with support from Fidelity Bank and the Bank of Industry, in partnership with Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer.
The ministry has positioned the project as a potential regional maintenance hub that could serve Nigerian and foreign airlines.
Air Peace has also projected that the facility could generate more than 50,000 direct and indirect jobs, underscoring the wider economic potential of building a stronger domestic aviation maintenance ecosystem.
The project is expected to be completed within 24 months of its September 2025 groundbreaking.
The strategic significance of the investment extends beyond adding another hangar to Nigeria’s aviation infrastructure.
If domestic MRO facilities can secure the approvals, technical expertise, equipment and capacity needed to service a broader range of aircraft and components, Nigerian airlines could retain a greater share of their maintenance expenditure within the domestic economy.
That would create demand for local engineers, technicians, parts suppliers, logistics providers and other aviation-support businesses.
It could also reduce pressure on airlines’ foreign exchange requirements by limiting the volume of maintenance services that have to be purchased offshore.
For Nigeria, the opportunity is therefore to turn aircraft maintenance from an aviation cost centre and foreign-exchange drain into a domestic industrial and services market.
From airline support to regional hub
The longer-term opportunity could extend beyond Nigerian airlines.
A sufficiently capable MRO ecosystem could attract aircraft from other African carriers, creating an export-oriented aviation service industry in which Nigeria earns foreign exchange by maintaining aircraft rather than spending it on overseas maintenance.
But achieving that outcome will require more than construction of new hangars.
Domestic facilities will need to secure internationally recognised approvals, expand aircraft-type and component capabilities, maintain high technical standards and develop a deep pipeline of certified engineers and technicians.
For Nigerian airlines, the immediate benefit would be greater access to local maintenance capacity.
For the wider economy, the bigger payoff would be keeping more of the N180 billion-plus annual maintenance spend inside the country while creating an aviation engineering and technical-services ecosystem capable of competing for work across Africa.
Nigeria’s MRO challenge is therefore becoming an industrial policy issue as much as an aviation one: the country’s ability to maintain more aircraft at home could determine how much value, foreign exchange and skilled employment its growing aviation market generates domestically.
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