FAAN, MMIA Power outages and Nigeria’s national embarrassment

By Ernest Odeh

 

EVERY year, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria’s busiest airport, experiences no fewer than two major power outages and this year  alone the airport has experienced five blackouts yet somehow the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has somehow played the ostrich, blaming everything else but its incompetence.

On Sunday, May 9, 2010, there was a power outage at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, which grounded flights and left several passengers stranded in intense heat and darkness.

Monday, 12 March 2012, same Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, was thrown into darkness for over six hours due to power failure.

Passengers arriving and departing the airport were almost suffocated at the immigration areas, the check-in area and the airline counters. Power supply to the airport had been irregular for over a week, while the airport manager, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), seem helpless on the issue.

March 8, 2013   the MMIA was also thrown into darkness for several hours crippling activities there and last Saturday the show of shame continued as the same airport for the umpteenth time experienced another power outage this one lasted till the evening of Sunday paralysing activities at the nation’s busiest airport last night.

Passengers of KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Arik Air’s London and United States flights, Air Maroc and Delta Air Lines British Airways, Air France, South African Airways with passengers boarding the aircraft with either tourchlight or phonelight.

Now what is funny is that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has come out time and time again to deceive Nigerians in defence of an incompetent airport authority.

This time FAAN explained that,”there was a power outage from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and the airport was on our independent power supply.”

“However, when power was restored, the surge adversely affected the K16 Transformer that serves the Air-bridges and rendered them unserviceable. This adversely affected operations of departing flights. The heavy rainfall further delayed attempts by engineers to effect repairs immediately.” 

Now, it is sad that this is still the same response that has been used to justify this shameful consistent inconsistency in FAAN’s operations as in 2013, if you recall spokesman of FAAN, Yakubu Dati blamed the power outages that took place at the international terminal of the Murtala Muhammed Airport and paralysed facilitation activities on thunderstorm.

Dati explained then that the disruption of electricity supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) led to surge, which caused the outages that happened three times; the last one lasting over an hour in some parts of the terminal.

He then said the Authority has embarked on a power improvement project at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, which would eliminate incidents such as this at the airport, stating that this project has been completed and is being test run, preparatory to the formal launching of the project.

 Now if this is the case and FAAN had put such a facility in place then why is it that since 2013 till now the MMIA has experienced no fewer thamn 20 power outages, reported or not.

 The fact that the airport authority continuously gives excuses on this issue shows a lack commitment to get the job done.

The truth is that power has actually improved in some areas in the state so one would find it embarrassing that some stakeholders are using the ‘poor power situation in the country’ to help FAAN justify its incompetence.

Apart from airlines that are affected, what happens to people who are in the terminal feeling the heat and the impact of the congestion at the terminal and how are those who use the convenience at the airport suppose to flush/ in fact the entire airport as it is needs to be quarantined by the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) because the whole place is a standing virus.

Other than people how will this affect flight operations? Already we know that the power outage which started at 10pm affected passengers of Arik Air’s London and United States flights, Air Maroc KLM, Virgin Atlantic, and Delta Air Lines British Airways, Air France, South African Airways with passengers boarding the aircraft with either tourchlight or phonelight.

As at the time of the blackout, air-bridges were rendered unserviceable, adversely affecting operations of departing flights and what about airfield lightings?

With incidents like this it is clear that the unions are just placard carrying jokers who cannot justify why these airports should not be concessioned although this would still happen whether it was concessioned or not but the reality is that if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect a different result.

 Persnoally, I am not a fan of concessioning seeing how that of Bi-Courtney went but as this case is, one suspects the Minister of State, Aviation will have stronger grounds to present his case of concessioning to the supervising Minister and the President.

This is indeed a shame for this nation and the most shame is how the airport authority shamelessly continues to justify their incompetence