As part of the remodelling project of the Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, some airport terminal buildings are being renovated.
Akin Olukunle, spokesman for Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), said the aims are to change the obsolete infrastructure at the 22 airports managed by FAAN as well as turn around the fortunes of the aviation industry in consonance with the Transformation Agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan Administration.
A visit to, at least, domestic and international wings of the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA) in Lagos showed this, even though the project is receiving so many criticisms because of the alleged illegal use of $70 million from the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) account for the project.
At the site of many of the reconstruction works, there are no dates of completion, no contractor names, among other vital information.
“Rather than wasting $60 million from the BASA fund as recently alleged on airport terminal remodelling, government should give these airports out as concessions to private institutions and airlines to develop as public private partnership and there are many of them willing to take up these airports as commercial challenges,” John Ojikutu, a retired Airforce group captain, said.
While the road show by Stella Oduah in three countries: China, United States of America and Canada, to woo investors into the planned Aerotropolis project, the runway 19 Left lighting system had remained abandoned for over five years.
The non-completion of this runway lighting system is a serious safety issue and the reason for diverting all air traffic to the international runway 19 Right after sunset thereby causing increasing delays of air traffic in the holding on the ground for departing traffic and in the air for arriving traffic.
“Some major safety concern one would expect government to seriously pay attention to instead of the wasteful spending of public money is the runway lights. Aside from causing air misses, such delays which are additional cost to the airlines on fuel consumption could result to avoidable emergency situations if the delays are longer than necessary,” Ojikutu noted.
Additionally, experts have identified that the provision of Emergency Operating Centers, Pilots Briefing Rooms for the four international airports and the deployment of Doppler Weather Radars in the country which were part of the infrastructure that were planned to be funded with part of the first intervention fund have been abandoned, and there is nothing to suggest that there are plans to have them revisited.
Apart from the foregoing, there are concerns too on the porosity of airport perimeter fences which are daily challenging the effectiveness of the National Civil Aviation Security Program (NCASP).
“There were cases of aircraft being controlled to land on closed runway and others being cleared to land when herds of cattle were crossing the runway. There are still unresolved cases of aircraft accident investigation for well over six years when there are some beliefs rightly or wrongly that the air and ground services providers negligence are the causes of the accident.
These are some of the reasons why foreign airlines provide enhanced secondary security screening at extra cost which they pass over to the first and club classes’ passengers traveling from Nigeria.
Recently Aero management cried out that it lost over $103 million to poor airport facilities occasioned by long time neglect by government.
A major instance cited by the airline is the absence of runway lights at Lagos airport.
Akinlawon George, its managing director said the situation had eaten deep into the finance of the company, adding that there is need to overhaul airport facilities.
He said the situation which automatically resulted into lack of night operations, also shrinks their businesses. At some airports, the runway lights fail, especially when pilots are about descending.
This also leads them to divert to alternate airports.
“Airport infrastructure needs to be overhauled, lack of runway lights in Lagos alone costs Aero N60 million in a year; lack of night operations at the other airports is a loss of $35 million; lack of lighting of taxiways means a drastic reduction in safety of passengers and failure of Runway lights at Lagos, Abuja Enugu and Calabar has cost aero an additional N4million in 2012 alone,” George said.
He said FAAN has not done enough on wildlife control at airports, adding that between January and June this year, the airline lost over $8 million to bird strikes which had impacted on aircraft engines and blades.
Ojikutu lamented that the deficiencies are some of the risks associated with the operation of the industry that call for urgent attention than the airport terminal remodelling.
“These risks are part of the reasons why none of the airports, including the premier ones at Lagos and Abuja, have not been certified or licensed safe in spite of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority regulations and oversight programmes rated as category One by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
“Government should therefore concentrate its energy and the resources of BASA on these challenges and the regulations for the development of the industry to meet best practices or international standards,” Ojikutu said.
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