Chairman, House of Representatives, Committee on Aviation
The House of Representatives Committee on Aviation headed by Honourable Nnolim Nnaji has urged the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, (FAAN) to put in place all necessary measures to avert a re-occurrence of the type of power outage experienced at the D finger arrival of the international wing of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, (MMIA), Ikeja Lagos on the weekend.
The D finger arrival was reporterly thrown into darkness for about fifteen minutes on the night of Friday ) April 1, 2022 after a storm damaged one of the feeders supplying electricity into the terminal building
The incident occurred at about 11:15 pm when arrival passengers who disembarked an Air France flight were undergoing facilitations.
Honourable Nnaji in his opening remarks at the meeting with the FAAN management and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, (NCAA) stressed that the committee had to invite the two aviation agencies for explanations on the incident following a disturbing video that went verile at the weekend.
The committee chairman who expressed the displeasure of the Parliament over the e development said a prime airport like the MMIA ought to have standby generators that were supposed to switch on automatically immediately the public power source went off.
In his response, Managing Director of the Federal Airports of Nigeria, (FAAN) Captain Rabiu Yadudu disclosed that the problem was caused by the heavy rain which fell that night that affect the underground cables that supply power to the affected wing of the Airport terminal building.
Yadudu further disclosed that the international terminal of the Murtala Mohammed Airport has six 4.8 KVA generators serving as alternative power source to the terminal and that they usually switch on automatically within five seconds whenever there was disruption from the national grid.
He also stated that the problem lasted for only fifteen minutes before the light was restored adding that it was blown out of proportion through the social media network.
The Managing Director equally disclosed that the greatest challenge facing the authority was that some of the underground cables had damaged and needed total replacements because they were laid over forty years ago.
Also speaking in same vein,, the Director-General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, (NCAA), Captain Musa Nuhu said since the terminal was built in1978 no major renovation had been carried out on it.
He noted that what the terminal required was total remodeling and replacement of the cables as the only way to solving the problems which according to him had been a reoccurring issue.
Honourable Nnaji however maintained that FAAN and the NCAA should meet and come up with suggestions on how to address the problem permanently to avoid future embarrassment of the type of what happened on April 1, 2022.
