Nigeria to equip all airports with free Wi-Fi

Nigeria is finalising a deal with an unnamed Canadian firm to equip all the country’s airports with free Wi-Fi.

Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo said the initiative forms part of efforts to improve the travelling experience at all international and domestic airports in the West African country and to make Nigeria the aviation hub of Africa.

In furtherance of its aviation hub vision, Mr. Keyamo disclosed that a technical committee would be inaugurated next week to draw up a master plan for

Nigeria’s aviation, after which the Ministry will seek the right investment partners to actualize it.

Touching on the decision to move the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria’s headquarters from Abuja to Lagos, he said the move will help save millions of Naira spent by FAAN officials on flights to Lagos to attend meetings or to sign off documents.

“When I was shown the book, I realised over N450 million was spent on flight tickets for staff moving from Lagos to Abuja daily in a year,” he said. “So, why do we make this decision? It is not like I woke up one day and made the decision. The new management approached me with the facts and said this is our problem. I asked them what the problem was and they said that some of the directors were here but the support staff and the departments under those directors had no place to stay and were in Lagos.

“The implication is that daily, you know FAAN is customer service based, and every day, the staff need to meet, make decisions, and all that. For these departments that are in Lagos whose directors are here in Abuja, you will see them (staff of those departments) flying every day from Lagos to Abuja and vice versa to get one simple signature or get one document approved for one small meeting or the other, and this is compounded by the fact that FAAN is not yet digitalised and that is what I met on the ground because they can’t yet exchange digital documents.

“So, they fly every day back and forth. In one year, when they showed me the book, they spent close to half a billion naira on air tickets just for flights between Lagos and Abuja. They spent over N450 million naira on flight tickets alone and I shouted and said what is this? The MD has an office here but she would need four persons and they would fly from Lagos to Abuja daily,” Mr Keyamo explained.