Wole Shadare 
The Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Olubunmi Kuku, said the agency was taking a bigger, bolder approach to fixing decrepit infrastructure at the country’s airports that had been left for so long.
She noted that the whole infrastructure gaps at the airports which stakeholders put at about more than N3 trillion won’t change overnight. Kuku, who spoke at Business Breakfast Meeting put together by the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI) in Lagos with topic, “Cape Town Convention Practice Direction”, disclosed that since FAAN could not undertake the repairs of all the aerodromes, it is primarily concerned was to make the airports and terminals specifically habitable for the users while they work on this upgrade.
She said: “You heard somebody say we have about 91 airstrips and 31 airports. Imagine what South Africa is doing today.
I believe investment in the Thabo Mbeki airport is over $1 billion just this year. We cannot afford to do that and it means hat we need to look at our high priority airports – Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt on the domestic side. “On the international side, Lagos, Abuja and Kano are priority.
After that, we then focused and took a look at our secondary airports. Let us make sure they are safe and habitable. What is required to turn them around is probably a lot more minimal than the rest. We then take our larger airports and we focus on making them a hub.”
The FAAN boss explained that what the agency is doing is not just building infrastructure and making additional investment but one that would yield the right returns and give comfort to the international community because of the status of aviation as global, stressing that “there is nothing like Nigeria standard.”
She said what President Bola Tinubu’s administration had done in the aviation industry in the past 11 months was largely to focus on key areas where they can make some quick wins in terms of improving the environment for airline operators, the airlines, and pilots who are flying through the airports.
She said: “Over the last few months, we have been working aggressively on improving the state of the runways.
We had opened that earlier. We have some issues with taxiway A and taxiway B. We have started to work on those. In Abuja, there were some challenges around some of the runways as well as the pavements which we have started to work on.”
She assured that before December, all of the runway markings across all of the airports should have been completed.
Meanwhile, President of Aviation Round Table (ART), Air Commodore Ademola Onitiju (rtd), in his address at the summit, viewed the activation of the Cape Town Practice Direction policy by the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court of Nigeria – Justice John Tsoho as commendable, just as he lauded the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo’s effort that birthed the realisation of the aircraft lease agreement document. .
