The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) says charges are not the most expensive in the world as it denies media reports of cannibalising its screening machines.
General Manager, Corporate Communications, FAAN, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu, while commenting on these matters says FAAN’s charges were in consonance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) recommendations.
She said the recent breakdown of its screening machines at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos was was technical and they were immediately fixed, adding that they have since been deployed for use.
She said: “Those things broke down not because of non-availability of spare parts. Machines do breakdown and human beings, too. The machines work daily for 24 hours. They just had technical glitches during the week and before the end of the day, one of the machines was fixed and it started working. And over the weekend, all the three machines were back in perfect working conditions.
“The issues we had with screening machines didn’t compromise security in anyway. All the security agents that are with us at the airport came to assist us and where they needed to do manual check-in, they did and no passenger misses his or her flight as speculated in some quarters.. All the agencies cooperated with us to ensure that passengers met up with their schedules”.
Mrs. Yakubu also denied media reports that it cannibalises screening machines at the nation’s airports, insisting that the agency had never cannibalised any of its equipment as there were enough spare parts for its equipment nationwide.
“We don’t cannibalise our machines. We use them to screen passengers and baggage that come to the airport. FAAN is a very serious agency. We will not cannibalise machines. It is just because the machines were running all of the time and they just decided to breakdown. Some things happen that you don’t have a control over.”
Explaining further, she said the management team of FAAN, led by Engr. Saleh Dunoma on Tuesday went on inspection tour of the facilities at the international wing of the Lagos and expressed satisfaction with their performance.
She insisted that facilities at the terminal had improved in the past six months, stressing that the agency would continue to enhance their functionalities.
“The management at international (Lagos Airport) have refurbished the toilets and improved on the lightings; what is left now is the tiling. There have been a lot of changes in the past six months. The general ambience at the airport has improved and lots of things have been remodelled at the terminal. The signage has been worked upon. This has led to seamless passenger facilitation”.
