The decision by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to enforce a total cashless payment regime across the nation’s airports was billed as a bold step toward transparency, accountability, and revenue efficiency. Under the “Operation Go Cashless” initiative, cash payments at airport gates, car parks, and other service points have been scrapped in favour of prepaid cards and electronic channels. In theory, the policy aligns with global best practices. In practice, its rollout has exposed troubling gaps in preparation.
Across major airports, travellers have faced gridlock, long queues, and last-minute scrambles to obtain payment cards. Many motorists arrived unaware they could no longer pay cash, while others struggled with registration bottlenecks and network glitches. The result has been missed flights, frayed tempers, and avoidable hardship — hardly the seamless modernisation Nigerians were promised
The bigger issue, however, is not digitisation itself but the rigidity of its implementation. In other critical national processes, such as elections, authorities often retain manual backup systems to hedge against technological failures. At the airports, no such flexibility was built in. The absence of contingency measures in a country still battling connectivity challenges suggests either policy haste or insufficient sensitivity to local realities.
To its credit, FAAN, under the leadership of Olubunmi Kuku, has acknowledged the teething problems and deployed additional staff, expanded card distribution points, and intensified public awareness campaigns. The authority has also reiterated that prepaid Go-Cashless cards and electronic debit or credit card options are available to ease transactions. These are important corrective steps, but they should have preceded, not followed, enforcement.
Modernisation must not become synonymous with inconvenience. A policy designed to block revenue leakages should not end up costing citizens time, comfort, and confidence. Reform is necessary, but reform without readiness breeds resistance. What FAAN, and by extension the government, must now do is strengthen infrastructure, widen payment options, improve public communication, and, crucially, introduce temporary fallback measures until the system stabilises.
Cashless airports are not the problem. Costly chaos is. If the government truly seeks efficiency, it must match ambition with preparation — and ensure that travellers are not the collateral damage of reform.