Security and safety issues at airports
Over the past few weeks, Nigeria’s air transport system has become an imitation of our road transportation system. Three notorious attributes of Nigerian roads have been borrowed by the aviation industry in recent times. One, vehicles regularly break down on our roads and often slow down traffic for hours; now airplanes break down at our airports and delay flights. Last month, flights were grounded because a Gulfstream G200 private jet skidded off the runway while landing at Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport due to a malfunctioning landing gear. This led to the closure of the airport for an hour, leaving passengers stranded.
Two, theft and robberies regularly occur on our roads, which our planes and our airports have recently imitated. On February 8, 2018 bandits attacked an Air Peace Boeing 737 aircraft while it was taxiing to depart from Murtala Muhammed Airport [MMA], Lagos for Abuja. This happened at the domestic terminal of the airport at 7.35 in the evening. Burglars forcefully opened the cargo hold of the Air Peace Flight 7138 while it was on the runway. While confirming the incident, Air Peace’s corporate communications manager Chris Iwarah said, “We are sincerely grateful to all our wonderful guests on board Flight 7138 for their support, patience and cooperation throughout the precautionary security checks conducted by Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) squad, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Aviation Security (AVSEC) and our security team after suspected thieves opened the cargo hold of our aircraft holding for departure on Runway 18R (A1) of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos at about 7.35pm on Thursday, February 08, 2018.”
It wasn’t the first time that burglars did this. In January, at the same airport, while two Nigerian musicians Ayodeji Balogun aka “Wizkid” and Tiwa Savage were returning onboard a Bombardier Challenger 605 jet from Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, it was alleged that the cargo compartment was burgled and Tiwa lost her luggage. Although Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) said this didn’t happen, Tiwa Savage insisted that it did. Back in March 2013, three police officers and a civilian were killed when armed robbers attacked a bureau de change at the same Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos.
In yet another curious incident early this month, an emergency exit door fell off a Dana Air airplane with 120 passengers onboard while taxiing to the apron area of Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja. The airline and the passengers traded blames on what caused the door to fall off. While Dana airline said it couldn’t have come off without conscious human intervention, the passengers said that no passenger was near the door when it fell off. Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority [NCAA] said it was investigating the incident. What would have happened if the door had fallen off while the plane was mid air is better imagined. The only feature left to count for this transformation to turn our aviation industry into a perfect imitation of our transportation system, is kidnapping. While we pray that that wouldn’t number among the things that are wrong with our airports, we call on NCAA and FAAN to do their work.
It’s rather surprising that these things are occurring in aviation, an industry that puts so much stock on safety and arguably has the most advanced safety culture of our transport system. While we call for the general tightening of our lax safety standards nationally, we are quick to also point out that if there should be one sector to be excluded from our “Nigerian Factor” it should be the aviation industry because here, when things go bad, they tend to go completely bad. Therefore, the regulators and managers of the sector must ensure that safety protocols for which the sector is known for are adhered to strictly.