Kuku: We’re leveraging technology to improve new Lagos airport terminal

Mrs Olubunmi Kuku is the managing director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). In this interview with CNBC monitored by WOLE SHADARE, she speaks about the plan to turn the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos terminal under construction, into Africa’s premier aviation hub, how to drive passenger traffic effectively, and the provision of transit facilities at the major airports across the country, among others

 The big decision came from the President last week on the need to apply the brakes on cashless payment. What does the final payment architecture for Nigeria’s efforts look like automatically?

Kuku

Yes, it’s been quite a hectic week for us as well as for some of our passengers and, of course, commuters in the area. I’m sure you’re aware that we actually introduced a cashless policy last year. So it was actually about July or last year, and we intensified in October. This year, we’ve seen quite a number of policy directives from the federal government asking us to stop cash activities.

Why was it difficult to implement?

Of course, implementing the cashless policy made things quite hectic because many commuters and even some passengers, despite ample awareness, did not believe we would actually enforce it on March 1st. It did create a huge bottleneck in the first few days, but we saw it start to ease up. I gave some interviews recently where I pulled data from October, when we actually started the implementation, through March 3rd. We’ve registered about 100,000 customers, of whom 62,000 were registered in the last few days. In Abuja, for example, we saw the traffic start to ease up. But despite that, we are an airport. Our ultimate goal, beyond safety and security, is also to ensure that our passengers and the surrounding areas have a seamless experience. We’re grateful to Mr President. He was able to step in.

I look at this as trying to hit an elephant, and where do we start from talking about our regional home foundations, and also the rehabilitation of the airports here? I’m thinking, how do you compete, where do we start, and how are we getting there?

I will start by saying that if you look at Cairo, at the Cairo International Airport, and then at the Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, they’ve done something that works extremely well, so actually it’s three of them. So look at Oliver Tambo, look at Addis and then look at Cairo. What works extremely well for them is that they’ve not just made their airports destinations for passengers entering their country, but also hubs.

And what does that mean? A lot of people use the term hub very loosely. A hub is literally an environment, like an airport, where you can move transit passengers from one location to another without necessarily making that country their final destination. In Nigeria, for example, when you look at the key factors that drive passenger traffic, the biggest is GDP.

When you look at the GDP of the Nigerian population, and you compare it to our passenger traffic, it’s actually very low; it’s less than 2%. What that means is that many Nigerian passengers are not travelling, unlike in other areas. For us to drive passenger traffic effectively, you need to do a couple of things. One, you need to improve the business environment, where many trade activities are taking place, bringing people into the country and driving overall economic activity. Whether it’s tourism or business activity. But when we start to look at the hub, we really see the future in two things. One is in driving the hub strategy, and the second is also in for both passenger and cargo. To make the hub strategy effective, a couple of things need to happen. It’s not just about developing an airport or building infrastructure. But it really requires that we look at the enablers. What are these enablers? For example, look at the airlines. So for us to be able to increase our aircraft movements and have additional points of entry, we look at the bilateral air service agreements that we have with other countries. I believe that during this administration of the last three years, the Minister has actually increased the number of routes operated by airlines serving destinations outside the country and into the Nigerian market. But what that also means is that as we start to say we’re driving a hub, one, you need to make sure that there’s a transit area. Today, at the Nigerian airport, it’s quite difficult to transit because there’s no transit facility. This is actually one of the things we’re doing as part of the ongoing rehabilitation work.

Does that set this back, or where are we in your execution?

Yes, we did have a fire incident that happened two weeks ago. It did have a bit of an impact, but I would say that it was minimal. The impact was really on some of the technology that we were moving. So, technology had us move from Terminal One into the temporary Terminal Two. But the good news is that we were actually planning on leaving that terminal. Wednesday was the last day for us to leave the terminal. So it’s just about a 2D setback. We had manual operations and manual checking for about four or five days. We’ve now been able to restore our operations to normal. Now, in terms of the rehabilitation it, yes, the 22 to 24 months still stands. As of November, if you’re passing through the airport area, we have now activated the temporary terminal. A temporary terminal has been built. I’m going to have it at the International Airport. Four airlines have moved into that terminal. Middle Eastern, Air France, KLM, and Ethiopian Airlines have moved in there. This is a temporary facility built over a three-month period.

At the end of the day, when you look at the airport experience, it’s all about how the passenger feels from start to finish. I’m trying to imagine what you’re trying to do because that’s the real test of all the reforms that I’ve seen out here. I’m trying to imagine how you’re looking at this and how you plan to execute that.

One of the things we did, as I mentioned earlier, was not just to design an airport. You basically designed an airport from the inside out. The first thing you mentioned was about passenger experience. What we did was look at the entire passenger journey from the moment you’re approaching the airport. Whether it’s tools, the passenger drop-off, curbside, or when you come in. If you notice, over the last few months, we’ve redesigned some of our airport operations, and that has also been incorporated into the new design, which improves passenger flow and allows you to potentially check in and even use certain touchpoints. It’s not just the infrastructure. We’re also exploring how we can leverage technology to improve touchpoints, e-gates, and biometrics. Right now, you have biometrics and e-gates in use at entry. We’ve incorporated biometrics on exit as well, which is incorporated into the new design. All of those are things that we’re considering heavily. But I think the big win for us will also be the transit facility that is being built and incorporated into this new design.

Wole Shadare