Louis Ibah
The Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos, was yesterday thrown into temporary darkness following the disruption of power supply by Ikeja Disribution Company
The power outage which lasted more than two hours created so much discomfort to both passengers and airlines as most operations had to be halted.
Aviation analyst, Group Capt. John Ojikutu, while not absolving FAAN of blame in the power outage, said the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) should be held accountable for the sad incident at the Lagos airport.
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“It is a general failure but more of the failure of the responsible authority on safety oversight to have total power failure on a category 1 airport for more than 2 hours,” said Ojikutu.
“Does the NCAA airport audit and certification checklists not include the alternative power source in the event of failure of the main source? What is the approved alternative programme in the event of this type of failure? Am saying all these in the event of sabotage or security emergency which is very possible in the Nigeria environment of today.
“At the time the MMIA had total power failure, there were a number of passengers in the arrival halls and only God and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency that directs air traffic know the number of aircraft in the air that had wanted to land and could have been diverted.
we have failed and NCAA should take a larger share in the blame because it’s not that the airport was certified that lost power for more than two hours as meeting the international safety and security standards,” Ojukutu added.