Cessna is the latest business jet builder to make a sales call on Nigeria in the last couple of months and the country’s business leaders expect more. A report in Ventures Magazine says the Wichita planemaker had a CJ3 and Sovereign on the ramp at Murtala Muhammed Airport and Abuja Airport last week trying to take a piece of the oil-rich country’s bizjet market. A couple of months earlier Dassault did a similar tour. The magazine quoted unspecified reports as claiming that Nigeria is the second-fastest expanding market for bizjets next to China.
The magazine says there were only 20 private aircraft in the country five years ago. Now there are about 130 and it has prompted a building boom at some airports. Maintenance and repair capacity is expanding, too. Bombardier was among the early entrants to the Nigerian market and has about a third of the business. Ventures said the company considered Nigeria its biggest market in Africa in 2012.
