Nigerian Flight Deck Travel and Business Reportage
- Promises permanent solution to power outages
MINISTER of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika has put the completion and delivery of another of the US$ 600 million Chinese-Nigerian funded terminal, the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport ( NAIA) in the next five weeks.
This is just as he explained the power outage that rocked the Murtala Muhammed International Airport ( MMIA), attributing it to constructions that are ongoing to complete some of the projects.
Sirika who spoke today at the 5th Aviation Stakeholders’ Forum at the Nigeria Air Force (NAF) Conference Centre, Abuja said that the the Airport at Abuja was almost done and that it would take four weeks to deliver, but stated that it would be safer to put the delivery at five weeks.
According to the minister, other terminals will come on-line soon joking that Lagos was next online after Abuja and it would be a thing of joy to ensure its delivery before the oncoming 2019 general elections.
On the power outage, the minister said that it was caused by the cables that were severed during construction of the terminal which ab initial was meant for somewhere else and was delayed due to litigation.
Speaking earlier on the outage, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria ( FAAN) Managing Director, Saleh Dunoma said that a permanent solution will soon be in place especially once the terminals are completed.
Meanwhile, speaking on the completion of the terminals, Sirika also stated that each terminal being jointly funded by Nigeria and China were delayed because of the execution challenges.
He said that for the Abuja terminal, it would have come online but the same power issues were noticed and this was due to the construction too.
” when constructing Abuja, some of those power cables like in Lagos were severed and this provided a challenge it still does but when the terminal is complete, this will be taken care of.”
” As you also know the structure put in place was situated wrongly and would cause the relocation of the fire service building and the control tower because the new terminal is blocking the line of site of the tower and access to fire services if the need arises.”
On the Lagos terminal, he said once work is complete at the new terminal, ” we will move our passengers there so that we can take a portion of that terminal and do proper work on it. After all Murtala Muhammed is our priced terminal.
