The first recorded flight in the annals of aviation in Nigeria landed at the ancient and walled city of Kano in 1925.
The flight, which was in a British fighter-aircraft, was conducted by the Commanding Officer of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Squadron based in Khartoum, Sudan. The pilot made a breath-taking but safe landing on the horse racecourse in Kano; thus going down in history as the first recorded aviation activity in Nigeria.
The flight operation was regarded as a “particularly hazardous one” because there were neither air routes nor maps nor radio communications, nor airfield/airport.
The flight of the Royal Air Force was to become an annual event starting from Cairo, which was another base, down through the Nile to Khartoum and then Maiduguri and Kano. Very little is known of the early commercial aviation in Nigeria, but available records have it that a gentleman called Bud Carpenter, owned a private de-Havilland Moth aircraft, which he frequently flew between Kano and Lagos. He used the rail tracks as his guide, and this meant additional distance for him.
There is also a record of an enterprising pilot who carried a few passengers in a seaplane between Lagos and Warri in the early 1930s.