Efforts to fully secure Murtala Mohammed International Airport, MMIA Lagos to ward off vandals and other unauthorized persons especially at the airside of the airport has taken a new height with the recent acquisition of a mobile surveillance vehicle fitted with cameras to adequately monitor the airside of the airport.
The manager of the nation’s airports, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria FAAN has also concluded arrangements to procure 10 more vehicles for 24 hours, 7 days a week patrol of the airside in addition to the 6 currently in use.
Also to enhance security at the airport are Closed Circuit Television, CCTV, cameras.
At the launch of the surveillance vehicle, the Managing Director FAAN Mr Kabir Mohammed said, they are committed to ensuring the safety and security of passengers, stakeholders and other airport users.
“We are putting one here for a start. We have some radars at 18R and 18L and they will be feeding information to this and we will be able to also monitor it from the tower.”
On manpower, Kabir said, the complaints of inadequate manpower is being addressed to make sure there are adequate personnel on ground.
The Airport Manager, MMIA Lagos and Regional Manager, South West Airports, Mr. Sunday Ayodele while applauding the management for the provision of the facility, promised the surveillance of the airport is now better enhanced
He disclosed that, more of this vehicles are being expected to cater to other airports in the country.
Mr. Ayodele said of the vehicle, “It has the static and the roving cameras in it and the essence is to be able to project the airside so that in case of any intruder it will send a signal to us there and it will send a signal to the control room and once we are able to sense the place, our people will go straight to the exact place.
About the Surveillance vehicle
Manufactured in Slovenia, the mobile surveillance vehicle has thermal cameras, an inverter with batteries, and rechargeable with a generator provided in the vehicle and also powered via through a power supply.
Has a charging point which can be connected from the side of the vehicle,
standby batteries that can run for 8 hrs daily, even though, surveillance is 24hrs.
The vehicle has two multi-central cameras to be mounted at the control towers with five radars; three on the 18R runway and the other two on the 18L, which monitor events on the runways and its environment, mounted on the cameras to monitor and detect every single movement.
The cameras are long range cameras that can detect long distance range to about 5km, detect a person and put an ID to the person, which means visual recognition of the person.
It also has a GPS signal, that can download all the maps of the environment to calculate the distance of the person and location through the map, it works under rain, fog or any hazy weather both day and night.
