The Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs Olubunmi Onabanjo-Kuku, has justified the humongous investment being made in airports across the country.
She also hinted that discussions are at advanced stages on financing the planned extension of the Lagos Mass Transit Red Line Rail into Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA).
Kuku made these known while speaking as a Keynote Panellist at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, under the theme: ‘Defining the Airport of the Future-Technology, Partnerships and People’,
“We are actually working on completing the financing of the capital structure for that project, ” she hinted
The Federal Government, in collaboration with FAAN, plans to construct a rail track linking the Lagos airport’s three terminals to the Red Line as part of the wider MMIA modernisation project, which would significantly improve how people travel to and from Nigeria’s busiest airport.
On the rail project she said, “We are actually working on completing the financing of the capital structure for that project.” she continued, “What it does is, it allows us to connect the city very quickly to the airport with five stops within our airport. It connects our terminals and links our cargo terminals to the last stop. So, it’s a collaboration with the state government and the federal government as well, so for us.”
Kuku who justtfied the huge investments being made in the sector, affirmed that the recognition of air travel as the safest mode of transportation prompted her to pay more attention and prioritised the investments.
“The Murtala Muhammad International Airport terminal, Kuku explained at the forum,” will become a more efficient, passenger-friendly facility with state-of-the-art technology. The MMIA has had no major infrastructure upgrade since it was built. We have just embarked on that upgrade, and I’ll speak about what we’re doing. But that particular airport accounts for 68 percent of all of my traffic in Nigeria. It’s followed by Abuja Airport, which, I think, handles about 3 million passengers, and then Kano.
“Three airports account for 80 percent of the traffic, but I still have 19 other airports and five other airports that I’m supporting that I also need to prioritise.
“In Nigeria, we see air transport not just as a mode of transportation, but also as economic viability and support. Air transport has also become one of our safest mode of travelling. What that means is we need to be able to balance very carefully the sorts of investments and the priorities that we make in those investments.”
She said further, “For me it’s been threefold, the first is a very clear criterium that focuses on safety, so you will see that a lot of our investments largely focus on some of the airside activities because that’s what we need to have our basic operations running and functional. In the last three years, we focused on rehabilitating our major airports and the primary international airports.”
According to her, “Nigeria has six international airports: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu, and Maiduguri. We’re rehabilitating the runway, including complete resurfacing of the runway extensions where possible at two of the airports, and installing improved airfield lighting systems.”
“For Lagos specifically, being the flagship airport, Terminal 1 is actually being completely gutted. We’re not expanding Terminal 1, but we’re making it a lot more efficient.
“What that means is that we’re changing the layout with immigration and customs, the number of counters that you have, making it a lot more passenger-friendly, ensuring that we have modernised technology and infrastructure that makes travel easier for passengers,” she explained.
