FAAN denies negligence of facilities, assures improved security checks at airports
Contrary to speculations that several checking in screening machines at Nigerian airports have been compromised and left to rot away, the management of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has denied that it has neglected critical security checks during boarding.
In an interview to douse the fears at a time there had been reports intelligence on chances of attacks at airports, the General Manager, Corporate Communications at FAAN, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu stressed that the observed breakdown of certain security infrastructure had been fixed and that the agency had never cannibalised any of its security check equipment.
She was quick to recall that the agency’s engineers carry out regular and routine maintenance of its safety and security facilities as part of its drive to deepen seamless service delivery at airports.
Yakubu averred that “Those things broke down not because of non-availability of spare parts. Machines do breakdown and human beings, too. The machines work daily for 24 hours. They just had technical glitches during the week and before the end of the day, one of the machines was fixed and it started working. And over the weekend, all the three machines were back in perfect working conditions.
“The issues we had with screening machines didn’t compromise security in anyway. All the security agents that are with us at the airport came to assist us and where they needed to do manual check-in, they did and no passenger misses his or her flight as speculated in some quarters.. All the agencies cooperated with us to ensure that passengers met up with their schedules.
In strong terms, she argued that “We don’t cannibalise our machines. We use them to screen passengers and baggage that come to the airport. FAAN is a very serious agency. We will not cannibalise machines. It is just because the machines were running all of the time and they just decided to breakdown. Some things happen that you don’t have a control over.”
The image maker confirmed that the FAAN leadership under Engr. Saleh Dunoma regularly carry out periodic inspections on critical infrastructures at all airports, noting that such checks had been carried out on Monday by Dunoma who expressed after touring facilities at the international wing of the Lagos International Airport.
