Louis Ibah
Managing Director/CEO of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mr. Saleh Dunoma, says efforts to stem security breaches across Nigerian airports would not yield expected dividends until huge investments are made in the acquisition and deployment of requisite technology that can guarantee effective surveillance of airports.
Dunoma spoke against the backdrop of complaints of rising incidences of undetected drug trafficking and stowaways at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, as well as the embarrassing incursion of a herd of cows unto the Akure Airport runway, in Ondo State that recently disrupted the landing of an Air Peace aircraft.
While acknowledging that the absence of perimeter fences in most of Nigeria’s airports aided the security breaches, Dunoma said the solution lies in total Close Circuit Television (CCTV) camera coverage as well as the mounting of the latest passenger and luggage scanning machines in all the country’s airports.
He also spoke on efforts to complete all ongoing airport remodelling and new terminal construction projects in the Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Port Harcourt airports.
Excerpts:
Completion of ongoing airports’ construction projects
People have often complained that the new airports’ terminal buildings under construction since the era of former President Goodluck Jonathan have continued to suffer several postponements in completion dates. My explanation is that we’ve had to change the completion dates of the terminals under construction in five or six of the airports because of some issues raised by the contractors. First, I want to say that there was an issue of evaluation of the cost of these projects because of the devaluation of the naira to the dollar. This became necessary because when these contracts were awarded, I think a dollar to a naira was exchanging at N165. But today, it is over N300. Now, the approval process to accommodate this variation was a bit lengthy. As we speak today, we are getting to the end of the journey. I can tell you that we have got the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) approval where we needed to keep the projects going. So, the contractors are working. If you visited recently, the Port Harcourt airport is over 80 per cent completed.
If you go to Abuja, the avio bridges are shooting out from the terminal building and all the materials are there on site, but just awaiting installations. So, we believe that by the middle of this year (2018), Lagos and Abuja airports’ terminals should be ready.
Abuja will come up very soon. In fact, we have been working with the Federal Capital Territory Minister to ensure that we connect the Abuja airport to the FCT through a light rail so that passengers can access the airport by rail transport. Very soon, the light rail in Abuja would be commissioned, alongside the terminal building and passengers can now come by train and also leave the airport by train.
Flooding at airports’ runway
I don’t want to speak on the Dana Air incident at Port Harcourt airport because it is under investigation. The Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) is on it and I don’t want to say anything for now. But I don’t think there are floods on our runways because one of the critical things in runway pavement is the drainage system. You drain the runways in two directions; you know, the runway is most times 60 meters wide. The centre is slightly high so that water does not stay on the runway at any point in time. All our runways are designed in such a way that they are properly drained of water whenever it rains. And if it is raining heavily, the airline pilots know their safety limit; they either land or avoid landing at a particular time.
Cows, stowaway incursions into airports
Incursions into the restricted areas of the nation’s airports have been more pronounced in recent time, and people want to know what FAAN is doing to have perimeter fences in most of our airports and eliminate these incursions. But what I want everyone to note is that an airport is a public place; there are certain areas that are restricted just as there are areas allowed for the public to access. And as you know, apart from the airport and airline staff, we have various categories of people coming to the airport. You have people that are providing services. Apart from that, since it is a public place, there is a limit to what you can do to stop people from getting access to some areas they are not supposed to access. So, that is why we have the airport access control system. We have our own measures put place to forestall these incursions. Among them, of course, are the proper fencing of the airport, vehicular and personnel patrol and there is also the deployment of technology for the surveillance of the airports.
To some extent, we have these facilities in all the airports but security challenges always come up in different forms. As you address one challenge, another challenge surfaces. In fact, even the challenge that you just addressed will come back again in another form. So, the only way out is to improve on our technology. It is only through technology that we can effectively curb the menace associated with the incursion of unwanted persons into restricted areas of our airports.
CCTV projects
As we speak, we have commenced a project at Lagos and Abuja airports to make sure we cover all the restricted areas with Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) camera coverage. These projects have reached their advanced stages. In Lagos, it is 80 per cent completed and in Abuja, it is about 70 per cent completed. Once these projects in Lagos and Abuja airports are commissioned, our security personnel will sit up and monitor these restricted locations through the CCTV. But the CCTV project will not just be installed in Lagos and Abuja, but in the five international airports across the country. I believe this is going to help us a lot.
But we are also buying mobile system technology, which has cameras on it and can see up to seven kilometres to detect moving or stationary objects. So, we will position it at our airports. The cameras that come with this technology are such that even at night, they will watch all the sensitive areas of the airport; the runway, apron and other restricted areas and capture what is going on there.
By the time we have all these technologies in place and we improve on the perimeter fences, the security in our airports will be watertight and nobody will be able to have access to the restricted areas. Those who try to breach our security will be easily caught.
Challenges with scanning machines
There have been reports that the scanning machines we have in some of the airports are not up to date and that they are not able to detect persons carrying illegal drugs. At present, we have various types of screening machines and equipment at our airports. The ones we have are not really the latest if I am speaking in terms of what is happening globally. So, I will quickly add that we are planning to buy the type of equipment that can check almost everything.
Recently, I went to Qatar where they were displaying some scanning machines. There are scanning machines now that would tell you the atomic number of anything. So, it can detect almost everything. We don’t have these machines now. But, what we have currently is a combination of scanning machines and hand held scanners, which are also detecting narcotics. So, the combination of that can help security men detect whatever they want to detect. Normally, the screening machines tell you they suspect something in a luggage. It is, however, left for the security personnel on ground to carry out further examination and analysis using the machines or focus on the area detected by the machines and if not satisfied, bring out the luggage or bag and check it manually. So, it is a combination of technology. But I can assure you that this would change for something that is more sophisticated and more efficient. Very soon, we will get these equipment at our airports.
Revenue diversification efforts
Most major airport managers across the world these days are diversifying their source of revenues from aeronautic (which has to do with core airline business) to non-aeronautic businesses that have no direct link with airlines. And I know that there has been complaints by many people as to what we are doing. Airports in Europe, America and in Asia make a lot of revenue, for instance, from the airport cities they create, the malls and duty free shops, hotels, among others, at their airports. But in Nigeria, a lot of revenues from our airports still come from aeronautical sources. But that is not to say that we don’t have non-aeronautical sources. The truth is that aeronautical revenues are very straightforward and very easy to capture; these are services that are much defined and the charges are also well defined. That also makes it easy for us to collect. And the reason we concentrate on aeronautical sources is because we want to concentrate on our core activities, which is providing facilities to flight operations and passenger movement. However, we are trying to develop non-aeronautical revenues.
In most cases, in order for us to free ourselves from the distractions that come with non-aeronautical services, we try to concession such businesses out to private firms. For instance, we concession out the car parks and toll gates so that FAAN can concentrate on its core business of servicing airlines and air travellers. I know there are some countries that have high non-aeronautical revenues and aeronautical revenues too. I assure you that Nigeria is moving gradually towards that era. We have issued out pieces of land for construction of hotels and other giant projects in our airports. And by the time projects like the aerotropolis we designed become reality, it will bring about a lot of developments on the landside of the airport, and Nigeria would be seen to have developed the non-aeronautical potential and we are going to earn more revenues from non-aeronautical sources. We are working hard on that.