…Assures safety, comfort
Acting Preseident Prof Yemi Osibajo has appealed to foreign airlines operating to Abuja international airport to accept their relocation to Kaduna airport as a temporary arrangement even as he assured them of their safety and comfort for the eight weeks the rehabilitation of the Abuja airport runway would last.
Osibajo made the appeal at Kaduna airport shortly after he personally inspected the level of on going works at the alternate airport.
The Acting President who disabused the minds of Nigerians and other stakeholders of the insinuation that foreign airlines have declined to operate to Kaduna pending the time the rehabilitation of Abuja airport runway would last, told journalists that many of the foreign airlines are willing and have accepted to move their Abuja operations to Kaduna airport.
According to him,”Well, one thing that is very clear is that it is not all foreign airlines that are declining to come. I have met some here today, who are willing to come, I have just spoken to Ethiopian airline, they are willing to come. I think what we need to tell foreign airlines is that obviously, this is an emergency, and a temporary arrangement, and they should really work with us with that temporary arrangement and we are concerned about safety and comfort.”
He added further, “They are here also to see for themselves, we will be happy if they work with us, we will be happy if they see it as a temporary and cope with some of the flight inconveniences here and there. And so we are persuading them to see it as a good temporary arrangement and some of them are
happy quite happy.
Meanwhile, Osibajo has urged the contractors handling the upgrade of Kaduna airport to expidite actions of the project.
He advised them to employ more hands to be able to meet the deadline for its completion and delivery.
“Basically, what we are trying to look at are the state of readiness and considering the fact that this is really a local airport, a lot of work need to be done to get to the kind of standard that is required, work has made considerable progress, but there is still quite a few things to be done but some of them will be completed this weekend, the ceiling and air conditioning and other facilities. But we think that it may not be in a complete state readiness by Wednesday but I expect that within the short period they have, it should have been a very beautiful and comfortable work.
“We have already told them that they certainly need to speed up, as a matter of fact, they need to double the number of people who are working on the ceiling and other facilities, they certainly need to work much faster and much more diligently to deliver the job.
