The Federal Government of Nigeria has launched the BisonFly Project, a centralized digital platform aimed at cutting down on the ballooning cost of air travel within the federal civil service.

The initiative, announced in Abuja by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, is being touted as a key reform step in the drive to enforce fiscal discipline across Nigeria’s bloated Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).

The move comes amid mounting pressure from governance advocates and economic analysts who have repeatedly called for a drastic reduction in the cost of running government — a longstanding drain on Nigeria’s limited public resources.

According to a statement released on the Ministry’s official X account on Friday, the BisonFly Project was developed by the Ministry’s Efficiency Unit in collaboration with ICT advisers and other key stakeholders. It will serve as a single digital platform for booking all official air travel, enabling the government to leverage its bulk purchasing power to negotiate better fares with airlines, eliminate redundant travel schedules, and ensure real-time tracking of travel-related expenditures.

“In its avowed commitment to ensuring cost savings across all air travels, the Federal Government has launched the BisonFly Project to optimize air travel costs for the Federal Civil Service through a structured, optimized, and technology-driven discount program,” the Ministry stated.

Wale Edun, who inaugurated the BisonFly Project team at his office, said the initiative was a direct response to the need for smarter financial governance. He pointed out that the cost of travel across MDAs had reached unsustainable levels, and that BisonFly was expected to bring transparency and coordination to what has largely been a chaotic and expensive aspect of government spending.

The announcement has also renewed focus on the wider issue of government spending and inefficiency. Nigeria’s MDAs, many of which operate without oversight, continue to gulp a significant portion of the national budget — often with very little output to show. Despite being created to drive service delivery and revenue generation, a number of these agencies fail to remit any revenue to the federation account, while still drawing heavily on public funds for recurrent expenses such as travel, allowances, and office maintenance.

Analysts have consistently flagged the MDAs as a black hole in Nigeria’s fiscal framework. A report by the Office of the Auditor-General has in the past revealed how several government agencies generated billions in revenue annually but retained nearly all of it, in violation of fiscal rules, while still depending on federal allocations to fund their operations.

This fiscal recklessness, critics argue, has not only deepened the country’s fiscal crisis but also eroded public confidence in government reforms. It is within this context that the BisonFly Project is being launched — not just as a digital tool, but as a symbolic gesture to rein in one of the many cost leakages plaguing the system.

Edun said the system would mirror international best practices, citing the World Bank’s use of centralized travel systems to manage costs and ensure accountability.

“By centralizing travel coordination and securing discounted rates, we are introducing a structure that reduces inefficiencies and ensures transparency,” he said.

The project, expected to go live in the coming months, will be monitored by a dedicated implementation team tasked with ensuring its swift rollout and measurable outcomes.

Raymond Omenka Omachi, the Permanent Secretary for Special Duties at the Ministry of Finance, praised Edun’s leadership, describing the BisonFly Project as a “benchmark for fiscal responsibility” that could become a model for other sectors of the public service.

But for many Nigerians, digital platforms and reform promises are not enough. The real demand is for a wholesale reduction in the cost of governance, from trimming redundant agencies to enforcing accountability in revenue-generating ones.

Groups like BudgIT and the Centre for Social Justice have repeatedly urged the federal government to go beyond surface-level reforms and restructure the civil service entirely, including merging overlapping agencies and introducing a performance-based allocation system.

For years, Nigeria has faced a paradox where over 70% of its budget goes to recurrent expenditure — salaries, allowances, foreign trips, and operations — while capital projects, which directly impact the lives of citizens, receive the scraps. That imbalance has only worsened in recent times, as the government grapples with inflation, mounting debt, and dwindling oil revenue.

Although the BisonFly initiative may help trim air travel costs, critics warn that such reforms will mean little if not accompanied by broader changes across the MDA ecosystem. Without mechanisms to enforce compliance and penalize agencies that sidestep the system, past efforts at cost-cutting have collapsed under the weight of entrenched interests and bureaucratic resistance.

Still, the launch of BisonFly marks a shift in tone from the Finance Ministry, signaling some political will to confront Nigeria’s cost-of-governance crisis. Whether this will translate into meaningful savings and long-term reform is a test yet to come.

As the United States tightens its trade policy under President Donald Trump, cautious optimism is rippling through the nation’s industrial base. For companies that have long insisted on making their products in America, the renewed focus on domestic manufacturing feels like vindication — albeit tempered by uncertainty.

Ric Cabot, CEO of Vermont-based sock manufacturer Darn Tough, is one such executive. His company, which has earned national attention for its high-performance socks backed by a lifetime guarantee, has spent years doing what many others abandoned: manufacturing entirely in the U.S.

“For the first time, and hopefully not for the last time, domestic manufacturing is in a good spot,” Cabot said in an interview with Business Insider. “But you gotta commit. You gotta commit to making it here. It isn’t easy. Nobody outsources anything for quality.”

That last line is more than a quip. It underscores a fundamental belief among domestic producers: offshoring may cut costs, but quality and control suffer in the process. With the Trump administration’s tariff-heavy trade strategy, companies like Darn Tough may finally have the market conditions to prove that point, even if they remain wary of the pace and unpredictability of the White House’s approach.

Tariffs and Their Double-Edged Sword

Under the Trump administration’s evolving trade agenda, tariffs are being wielded as tools to encourage reshoring — or the return of manufacturing to U.S. soil. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said as much in a February interview, calling tariffs “a means to an end” aimed at restoring the country’s industrial might.

But for business leaders, the end may be clear, yet the means remain fraught.

“It’s not like we could just flip a switch, write a check, and turn on all that capability the next day,” said Bill Banta, CEO of Decked, an Idaho-based truck storage system maker that manufactures its products in Ohio and Utah. “Multimillion-dollar capital investments don’t work on short timelines — especially not with tariff threats looming.”

Banta, whose company has gradually built its own injection-molding machines and robotic welding infrastructure, acknowledged that the current moment is favorable for firms like his. Still, he warned that a poorly coordinated tariff policy could backfire, particularly if the cost of imported manufacturing equipment rises.

“It’s really hard to make long-term investments if you don’t know whether you’ll be hit with significant tariffs by the time that equipment lands in a U.S. port,” he said.

Darn Tough faces similar challenges. While its wool is sourced domestically and all production happens in Vermont, the specialized machines it uses to knit socks come from Italy. That means even companies committed to U.S. manufacturing are not immune from the fallout of global trade disruption.

Undoing The Years of Manufacturing Neglect

For many executives, the current push to bring production back to America comes after decades of decline. Bayard Winthrop, CEO of California-based apparel maker American Giant, described the past 40 years as an era in which U.S. manufacturing was not just ignored but actively undermined.

“You can absolutely — particularly in knitwear — make very high-quality, very large volume knitwear in the United States,” Winthrop said. “They’ve just forgotten how to do it.”

American Giant’s model, like Darn Tough’s, relies on deep investment in U.S. supply chains and labor. But unlike multinationals that can shift supply networks around the globe, these companies are locked in, by choice and conviction, to the U.S. economy.

That commitment is starting to pay off. Darn Tough’s socks, which retail for around $25 a pair, may seem expensive next to $3 wool socks on Amazon. But with imported goods facing potentially higher tariffs, that price gap is narrowing. What once seemed like a niche product for quality-focused customers could soon be a mainstream buy for cost-conscious consumers.

A Long Road Back

Still, the CEOs agree: rebuilding America’s manufacturing base won’t happen overnight.

Cabot emphasized that making things domestically requires more than patriotic slogans — it requires time to train workers, develop supply chains, and build the kind of muscle memory that was lost when companies offshored en masse.

“We sort of jettisoned a whole demographic of people that worked in manufacturing,” Cabot said. “I just don’t see the reason why we can’t bring this back, but it’s going to take time.”

That time, and a predictable policy environment, are what leaders like Banta and Winthrop are now pleading for. They welcome the administration’s intent but worry about the execution.

“I don’t like the instability,” Winthrop said. “I certainly don’t think we ought to be treating our friendly allies, like Canada and Vietnam, the same way we’re treating China.”

He’s not alone in that concern. Many in the domestic manufacturing sector believe that while tariffs can be a useful tool, they must be deployed with precision. A blunt-force approach could hurt allies, drive up input costs, and make it harder — not easier — to build out U.S. capabilities.

Companies like Darn Tough, American Giant, and Decked are proving that American-made is viable. But they also serve as reminders that reshoring is a long game. It took decades to hollow out the industrial economy, and it will take more than tariffs and slogans to bring it back.

“The opportunity is real,” said Cabot. “But only if we’re serious about it — and only if we give it enough time to grow roots again.”