The new Lagos International airport terminal 2 will soon be opened for use by airlines, agencies and Passengers.
Preparations are in top gear to ensure movement into the terminal is seamless and hitch-free.
To this end, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, conducted a mock exercise Monday April 4th involving all agencies and passengers and it was deemed successful by the participants.
According to one of the participants, “The exercise was a success, we were able to deploy our men to the various counters at arrival and departure and our men were there on ground to carryout the exercise, the passengers arrived, they were cleared successfully, they picked up their luggage, it was a successful simulation but one or two things came up for us to also reassess and we still have to do one or two things and we are talking with FAAN, meetings are still going on but am sure very soon the terminal will be operational”.
Passengers quick facilitation is assured with the provision of 66 check-in counters for arriving and departing passengers.
Ahead of the movement to the new terminal, investigation revealed that, the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS headquarters, Abuja have strengthened the manpower in the airport command with the deployment of more officers.
Based on the mandate to the comptroller of the airport command by the Acting Comptroller General of Immigration of zero tolerance to corruption, the officers deployed are currently undergoing two weeks intensive induction training at the cargo unit of the NIS at the airport.
The two weeks training would focus on work ethics, being a special command certain skills, mindset, attitude, comportment are required of the officers.
An officer who did not want his name mentioned stressed that, “your cleanliness, even to the minutest details of how clean and how you smell are things people overlook but these are not things we overlook, this is something we need to impose upon them”.
After the two weeks training, the newly deployed officers would go on what is called ‘On the Job Training’, they will be taken to the various departments and units to see how the job is done.
“It is like an internship, they will go and under study various different units so that, they see how the work is done, some of them have worked at the airport before but some of them are totally new so they need to be engaged to know how the work is done, the kind of service we render, the attitude required, they watch the other officers who are there now to see how they do it and then, they will go back to the classrooms and with their own first hand knowledge, they now come up with questions”.
With these on ground, the NIS is definitely set for productivity and the movement to the brand new terminal is certain to happen soon.
During the NIS airport command service week in February this year, the service elaborated on how to treat the public, the passengers and those who come to them for one service or the other, an officer of the command at the event stressed that, “there is need to engage the public in a civil and polite manner and yet still be professional so that, the public would understand that, the NIS is also a service rendering organization”.
The NIS has reiterated its Commitment to zero tolerance to anything that would portray the service in a bad light and any officer who is found wanting, done anything inimical to the service or gone against all its laws or involved in extortion would be decisively dealt with.
About the Terminal
The new terminal has the capacity to process 14 million passengers per annum. There are 66 check-in counters, 5 baggage collection carousels, 16 Immigration Desks at Arrival, 28 Desks at Departure, 8 Security Screening Points, 6 passenger boarding bridges with remote boarding and arrival.
Other facilities include 2 food courts, 4 premium lounges, 22 guest rooms and Spars, 16 airline ticketing offices, visa on arrival and port health facility, praying areas, more than 3,000sqm duty free spaces and over 5,000sqm let-table utility spaces.
