The Senate Committee on Aviation has summoned the ministers of Aviation and Power, Mrs. Stella Oduah and Prof. Bart Nnaji, over the power failure that delayed the landing of a British Airways plane on Saturday at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
Also invited for questioning is the Managing Director, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, Mr. Hussein Labo, and the Director-General, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Mr. George Uriesi.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Hope Uzodinma, who announced the summons when the committee members paid an unscheduled visit to the airport on Monday, said the officials would appear before the committee on Tuesday to explain the circumstances leading to outage.
Uzodinma said officials of the National Independent Power Project would also attend the session to shed light on their role in the management of electricity supply to the airport.
A British Airways flight could not land at the airport for one and half hours after electricity supply was cut off at the airport.
Uzodinma said the recurring blackouts at the nation’s airports were unacceptable.
Officials at the airport had told the committee that the problem resulted from a faulty PHCN connection system and the collapse of the three standby generators.
The committee was also told that the PHCN had disconnected one of the two lines dedicated to the airport, while electricity supply from the remaining line was being shared with the communities around the airport.
It also learnt that the Saturday outage occurred because the three generators at the airport suddenly packed up due to stress after running several hours following faults on the PHCN line.
According to Uzodinma, the Senate is deeply worried about the situation and will ensure that the embarrassment never occurs again.
He, however, said it was unlikely that the incident was sabotage against British Airways since passengers on board included many Nigerians.
“It is the duty of the authorities to protect the passengers coming into our airports irrespective of their nationalities,” he said.
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