Source: How pressure from Finance Ministry caused FAAN’s cashless policy setback
A source who was privy to the memo between the office of the Ministry of Finance but who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media hinted that the March 1 date put enormous pressure on the agency, which was still slowly testing its infrastructure and had less time to arrive at an acceptable level of compliance.
He said the Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, was initially apprehensive about the deadline but could not go against the Federal Government’s directive, despite the fact that the cashless policy would help improve the agency’s revenue and help to block leakages and speed business transactions at the pay points within the airport environment.
The failure of FAAN’s cashless policy, which led to its suspension by President Bola Tinubu on March 4, 2026, was primarily due to operational readiness and technical execution issues.
While the goal was to eliminate 50 years of cash-based corruption and plug revenue leakages, the rollout created what many travellers described as airport gate chaos.
The biggest failure point was the decision to allow—or necessitate—registration for the go cashless cards at the toll gates themselves.
Fielding questions from journalists upon arrival in Lagos from Abuja, Kuku said the President did not stop the process but took action to revert to the status quo of physical cash collection at the toll gates, ensuring the process itself was improved before it was rolled out.
She said, “I consider this to be a major win for the federal airport authority of Nigeria as well as the ministry of aviation, as you recall. Even the National Orientation Agency (NOA) has had its Instagram and social media handles since October last year. We were asked to implement a Federal Government directive, which was done at the Federal Executive Council. This was what we were pushing towards, but unfortunately, we were given a deadline.”
“We had actually asked for a hybrid approach that allows us to do both cashless and automated. On behalf of the agency and myself, we thank Mr President for this laudable initiative. The fact that the President is not just taking Federal Government initiatives or policy rollouts, but understanding the nature of every environment.”
“He saw the traffic gridlock that we were having as we were rolling out the cashless policy. In his good nature and understanding of our environment, he asked us to revert to the status quo or adopt the hybrid approach. That’s what we’re doing, so this is a win for the industry.”
“He’s actually given us some time to go back and refine. If you know, we were working with the private sector. The technology that we have actually works. We also had four payment modes, but he said to refine it and make sure we have enough users. I do want to say that despite all the enlightenment efforts, I believe many passengers and commuters did not realise we would actually stick to the March 1st deadline given to us. From October to March 3rd, we enrolled over 100,000 users, of whom 60,000 were enrolled in the last three days. For me, that is a major win.”
On way forward, the FAAN MD noted that the agency’s priority is to make sure that the technology works and secondly, to make sure that a lot of users are more enlightened and by giving more people the options to pick up whether it’s the cards, the e-tags, and then bring on the private sector on board to ensure that they sort of using lessons learned that are made in other regions as well.”
Kuku emphasised that the process itself was successful in terms of user registration and the number of people they onboarded, disclosing that they achieved at least 99% success with the deployed cashless cards.
She, however, stated that they realised it created significant gridlock, especially in Lagos, and that by Wednesday, they had seen a reduction in gridlock.
“But Mr President saw it, we saw it, and he looked at it and said, ‘ Look, we don’t want passengers missing their flights. We don’t want to have a negative experience. He said to go back, look at the policy, and that you have more time. Roll this out and implement this properly when you’ve onboarded the right number of users, given a number of appropriate channels.”
“So I am sure that in the next couple of days, once we’ve sort of gone down on the gridlock that we had over the last few days, we’ll look at it again and see how we can use the hybrid approach. If you listen to the minister’s interview after the Federal Executive Council, he said a hybrid approach that still allows users to use their cards and pass through the toll. But at least now we will still be able to accommodate cash where it’s applicable.”
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