Lagos power outage: A recurring embarrassment to Nigeria

It is becoming a routine without solution in sight. The incessant power outage at the Lagos airport and other major airports across the country is becoming embarrassing. I am sure many reading this article would say what is the big deal if the airports are without electricity considering the fact that many homes in Nigeria are without light?

Many would have thought that the problem that started over four years has been resolved, but the outage at the Lagos airport since Saturday has left a bitter bill in the mouth of passengers, airport users, airlines operators who lamented that the problem has done incalculable damage to their operations.

The recent embarrassing power outage at the Lagos airport is one too many. For too long we have allowed mediocrity to define the management of most of our national institutions.

One of the corollaries of such maelstrom of negligence is the abysmal rating of our airports on the international scale. The deplorable state of our airports says so much about our disposition to excellence as a people.

One expects the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika to see his appointment as an urgent mandate to halt the trajectory of decadence in this sector and must be able to take on the fifth columnists, who have festered their nest within the aviation bureaucracy through corruption and personal enrichment.

In some countries, sudden cut off of electricity is an aberration.  In Nigeria, it is still an awful daily experience.  But it becomes very dangerous when this becomes a regular phenomenon at the airports, especially key airports like the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos and the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

In these airports more than 80 per cent of the landing of international airlines takes place in the night and passenger profiling and screening also take place in the night. Unfortunately, it is at this critical period that the airports suffer from power cut which    paralyses passenger facilitation and forces security operatives, airport officials and airline
workers to resort to using torchlight.

Stewardship must be demanded from officers whose call it is to ensure the consistent functionality of basic airport facilities like the conveyor belt, the elevators and the air conditioners. Failure to identify some of these responsibilities with specific offices would perpetuate the vicarious institutional indictment that leaves nobody accountable at the end of the day.