FAAN tackles challenges in aviation upgrade

In recent times, the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria has faced backlashes from both passengers and stakeholders in the aviation sector. These point to core issues fuelling doubts in the international communities about the country’s adherence to safety protocols.

By global standards, safety is the centre of any successful aviation industry, and whenever the ball is dropped in any of the industry’s operational parts, experts believe safety has been threatened.

Stakeholders at various fora have echoed passengers’ pains and safety concerns hinged on various grounds, particularly harassment, touting, and extortions at the Nigerian airports.

Different incidents underscore unruly behaviours within the airport terminal, particularly by security officers, airport officials, and ground handling staff members.

This prompted stakeholders’ call for the removal of manual search desks of the Nigeria Customs Service, which resonated across the industry.

This call ensured some decorum at different points, but the adamant Customs checking officers returned to their position, as the disagreement between FAAN and Customs continued to linger.

This animosity culminated in a physical fight and near near-exchange of bullets between the anti-smuggling agency and officers of the Aviation Security.

The superiority battle played out between officers of the NCS and the Director of Aviation Security at FAAN, Igbafe Afegbai, during an attempt to replace a scanning machine at a cargo section of the airport.

Afegbai told The PUNCH that he, alongside some senior staff members at FAAN, had gone to the rancorous scene to replace a faulty security machine that was taken from Enugu airport on a temporary basis to the Lagos airport.

He said the customs insisted that the machine was an illegal item meant for export.

But workers at the airport believed that the disagreement was a fallout of the superiority contest between FAAN and Customs.

To show their displeasure for the “disrespect” toward the FAAN boss, aviation workers issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government to remove the Area Controller of the Nigeria Customs Service at the Pilgrims and Cargo Terminal of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

The workers also called on President Bola Tinubu to redeploy all Customs officers involved in assaulting the FAAN director.

The unions threatened rage against what they tagged as excesses and misbehaviours of the officers of the Nigeria Customs Service.

Watchers believe that the NCS was grandstanding to prevent automated scanning and instead rely on its manual search, a process that FAAN sees as an avenue to extort passengers.

Extortion in a different shade

Earlier in the year, Skyway Aviation Handling Company sacked a member of its staff for alleged passenger extortion and harassment at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

It was gathered that the sacked staff member, together with some other airport workers, allegedly extorted N100,000 from a traveller who was travelling to South Africa.

He was laid off after an investigative panel set up by the ground handling company in Nigeria found him guilty of the allegation.

The probe started after a passenger, Oyewale Oyesiji, an automobile engineer and a first-time traveller, claimed that he was extorted by some workers at the Lagos airport in December.

To eliminate illicit behaviours, particularly touting and extortion under the guise of multiple human checks, which causes unnecessary delay in passengers’ movement at Nigerian airports, FAAN commenced the procurement and installation of multimillion-naira machines to replace human checks of luggage, particularly at Customs checkpoints.

In April, the Director of Aviation Security at FAAN said the Customs table where they physically check travellers’ baggage would be dismantled before the end of the month when he conducted journalists round the newly procured machines.

The machines, which include six pieces of Orion 927DX, a full-body scanner, and an itemiser bought by FAAN, have the capacity to exhibit images in the Classic 4-colour and the new proprietary Spectrum 4-colour options, providing a clear image, allowing improved security by quick and accurate identification of threats, and increasing throughput.

Afegbai said the machines are also designed to detect a wide range of explosives and narcotics in real-time during the scanning process by marking a potential threat on the X-ray image.

While speaking with journalists, Afegbai stressed that by the time FAAN finishes installing all the screening machines and the monitors, each security agent will have their own monitors, emphasising that the tables for physical human checks will be quashed.

He explained, “The tables you see will be a thing of history; you will not see any table here. There will be no physical contact because what we are also doing is that when we fix those monitors and the machines detect unacceptable objects, the concerned officials will take the passenger and his or her luggage to designated areas for physical checks.

“The designated areas will also have CCTV cameras. This is to ensure the passengers are not being exploited. When the machines detect something, the aviation securities would call the relevant agencies, such as the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Customs, and Quarantine, amongst others, to follow up.”

He further explained that FAAN will be making additions to the machines to include six different monitors for the six agencies present at the airport, for their officials to monitor the bags through the screens.

He added, “Customs will have their screen. The quarantine will have its screen, and others will also have theirs. So, everybody will sit down while the luggage goes through the machines.

“Before we bought the new machines, our machines were not detecting some drugs, but with the new machines, we will start to train some of the security agencies, like the NDLEA, the DSS, the immigration, and the quarantine.”

Also corroborating the FAAN security chief, Head of Department, ICT at the airport, Chima Oge, said the new Orion 927DX machine has features that help with the identification of organic materials accurately and quickly, either in range mode, which highlights the areas based on the range selected by the operator, and/or in interactive mode, which provides the operator the option to display the areas based on the value of the pixel.

Security, another ‘principality’

Additionally, operators and other stakeholders have also complained about lapses in security caused by a lack of adequate training of staff members on the various fronts.