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The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC, on Thursday said a review it recently conducted uncovered patterns of alleged price manipulation by some local airlines in the country.
The commission said the price manipulation was recorded mostly during the last festive season.
A press release issued on Thursday by the Director of Corporate Affairs of the agency, Ondaje Ijagwu, said the findings were contained in an interim report released by the Commission’s Department of Surveillance and Investigations.
DAILY POST recalls that the commission, in December 2025, announced an industry-wide investigation into alleged sharp practices by airlines.
The FCCPC stated that the forensic exercise “benefitted from data collated by the Commission from airlines operating local routes in the country.”
Ijagwu noted that the report compares domestic airline pricing during the December 2025 festive period with post-peak January 2026 fare levels.
The statement revealed that preliminary analysis indicated that “fares recorded during the December peak were materially higher than those observed in the post-peak period across several routes, despite relative stability in critical operating variables like fuel price, government taxes, and foreign exchange.”
Ijagwu stated that the differences observed in fares “appear to reflect airlines’ arbitrary pricing decisions, including yield management and capacity allocation, rather than any variation in regulatory fees.”
He further noted that route-level analysis “shows that higher fares coincided with periods of reduced seat availability during predictable seasonal demand peaks. On some high-density routes, peak fares were clustered within relatively narrow ranges across several operators.”
However, he said the interim report recognised that seasonal demand pressures, scheduling constraints, and fleet utilisation may have affected pricing during the peak travel periods.
Reacting to the report, the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, Mr Tunji Bello, declared that the review is part of the FCCPC’s statutory responsibility to promote competitive markets and safeguard consumers.
He clarified that the ongoing assessment is intended to provide clarity on pricing behaviour, especially during predictable peak travel periods.
According to him, the FCCPC is not interested in disrupting “legitimate commercial activity,” but in ensuring that market outcomes remain consistent with competition and consumer protection principles under the law.
