03/02/2024
Sanitising Nigerian airports – Dr.Muiz Banire
Published: December 21, 2023
In arriving at the title of this discourse, I have had to scratch my head, as often said, multiple times, as all the titles easily occurring to me are indicting and suggestive of ineptitude on the part of the managers and operators of our airports, particularly the international wings. As the Yoruba would say, “Ko si be a se fe pe ori aparo, ti a ni pe’ri ikoko ti a fi se,” which literally means there is no way we’ll blame the quail bird for ending up a delicacy without blaming the conspiratorial pot that cooked it.
That is to say, it is difficult to hold culpable the immediate managers and operators of the airports without imputing the inefficiency to the doorstep of where the bulk stops. By this I mean that it will be difficult to exonerate the Minister in charge, which is the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, SAN in the circumstances if any of the title is chosen. I, however, chose to shy away from that as I know the Minister personally and officially. I am in no doubt as to his capacity to effect the desired changes crying for attention at the airports. Keyamo belongs to my constituency in multiple regards. As a lawyer, he is a brother Silk. As a comrade, I believe he would still assert himself as an activist, again still making him one of us in the civil society. I have known him for years and I do know that he cherishes his accomplishments and will avoid, by all means, the appellation of a failure. Also, events of the last few weeks in the aviation sector further reassures me that he is assiduously working and preparing for the radical reform of the sector.
It is in this connection that I struggled to avoid any title indicative of incompetence. So, bear with me in this respect.
Now, earlier this year, precisely on the 2nd of March, 2023, in an edition of this column https://sunnewsonline.com/who-is-in-charge-of-nigerian-airports/ , I raised the question as to who actually was in charge of the Nigerian Airports? That enquiry was necessitated by the reality at that time that everybody was in charge of the airports, with nobody taking responsibility for any act. Although there was a Minister who, for all intents and purposes, could not be said to be in charge of any delivery in terms of the expectations from the airports.
If anything, the Minister was at best in charge of procurement and nothing more. No wonder that he is still being pursued by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission after office, making him run helter-skelter all over. In practically all the projects and programs embarked upon by him, Nigeria hardly recorded any joy. Is it in terms of delivery of Air Nigeria, the country airline, which ended up a hoax? or is it in terms of the new functional terminal buildings? Mark my word, functional, and not a box that serves no modern purpose in terms of receiving big aircrafts/equipment?
The repairs carried on the runway in Abuja are already back to a sorry state with sufficient number of cracks all over. Prior to the intervention of the then Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, GCON, the airports were in a complete mess and chaotic, with the then Minister showing no leadership to restore order there. It took the unscheduled visit of the Vice President while acting as the President to enthrone sanity in the airports, particularly the international wings. Even to sustain this laudable intervention was a herculean task for the then Minister of Aviation.
At the verge of the presidential intervention then, the airport was populated by all manner of masquerades in uniform claiming to be officials. It was so bad that any uniformed organization found a place for itself in the airport and created job for itself. As Fela Anikulapo once sang, ‘majamaja dey there too’, referring to road traffic officials too. It was this intervention that eliminated a substantial number of these touts masquerading as security officials and the activities of the few remnants were streamlined. Nigerians then heaved some signs of relief. Little did we know that this change would be a temporary relief as the exit of the last administration seems to have signaled the return to status quo.
The invaders, or, do I say, the intruders, are back. In the referenced discourse, I presumed the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to be the agency in charge of the management of the airports. The truth, however unveiled when I realized that beyond the midwifing of infrastructure and maintenance, the Authority seems to lack operational control of the airports. As remarked above, as soon as the last administration exited, the old bad habits resumed. As I sojourned through the airports again these days, particularly the international wing, I cannot but watch helplessly again the trauma passengers are subjected to in the bid to travel out of the country.
The vast array, or should I say, a galaxy of uniform officials is back with their preying eyes. They appear most times like hyenas waiting for their preys to devour. Your torture as a passenger starts from the drop off area where you are confronted with three or more different uniformed officials struggling for space and relevance to extort alighting passengers from their vehicles. You hardly would have stopped before the harassment starts, all in the bid to ensure you part with something. As you sort out this, you are confronted with another set of ferocious officials, this time an admixture of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) security officials, police and other unidentifiable persons in the nature of touts, probably the middlemen that negotiate bribes with the desperate accompanying family members escorting the passengers. Beyond this point, you are now properly in for interface with other multiple layers of officials, both uniformed and ununiformed. This is when your suffering multiplies. As you approach the entrance, with your luggage already scanned by the FAAN security officials, the immediate toll is that of multiple agencies involving the Nigeria Customs, the men of the State Security Service, the NDLEA officials, heath control or environmental health officials, Nigeria police.
At times, men of the Air Force join them too and many more that are unidentifiable or faceless. The job of these officials is essentially to ignore the scanning and screening already done by the FAAN officials; then proceed to conduct physical examination of passengers’ luggage in search of what obviously is not lost nor missing. Is it still impracticable to watch the scanner alongside the FAAN officials, or create a special viewing centre for these officials to detect any offensive articles in the luggage, and taking them out of sight? Their approach is so menacing that a passenger is likely to be taken aback when invited. At the end of the supposed examination, or even in the course of the examination, the obvious rationale for the search unveils which is the exploitation of the passengers nicely or otherwise.
As if these are insufficient, as soon as you are done and the passenger progresses to the check-in area, you start sharing space with those who actually ought to be prevented from entering. These are the miscreants and self-imposed protocol officers doing emergency runs. No official harasses these ones for reasons best known to them. After checking, if you are thinking you are now liberated, then you must be joking. Going through the immigration process is not usually so much of a hassle, thanks to the immediate past Comptroller, who recently was deservedly promoted as the Assistant Comptroller General, Mrs. Adeola Adesokan and her Deputy, Deputy Comptroller Basiru, who carried out a radical reform of their processes and personnel. I hail them. As soon as you pass the Immigration, you continue your suffering, first with some unidentifiable officials who demand to see your travelling documents and interested in knowing your destination. The purpose, I still cannot fathom.
Now another scanning of your remaining luggage resumes, the second layer and I then wonder what the first scanning was for. Here again, you earn enough stress, humiliation and insults from officials that appear or behave as frustrated lots. More troubles resume after this passage as all manner of ‘uniform’ officials emerge again, majority of who are not officially dressed and have no easy identity than the official passage tags. Each of them serially takes turn to know your personal details, destination and check your travelling documents. Even NDLEA is interested in checking the documents and other details! This stage is the point of total onslaught at which you are so much harassed with a barrage of unnecessary questions and delay, except you understand the language of hasty clearance. This is the stage I detest most in my trips outside the country through the international airports. The question simply now is who will rescue the travelling passengers as opposed to who is in charge of the Nigerian Airports, earlier interrogated? As indicated above, the current Minister of Aviation does not have a choice than to sanitize the anarchy. Not much is required in effecting this change. I know that he is a cerebral person that is capable of thinking out of the box. But not much of brain tasking is demanded in this instance. We need not reinvent the will.
All that is required is to emulate best practices from other progressive countries and borders. With all sense of modesty, I can boast of being well travelled to the extent that I have traversed all the continents with substantial number of countries covered within the continents.
In most of the airports I had contacts with, I have not found beyond the immigration officials being feasible. You only occasionally see customs posing to psyche up passengers with possible sense of guilt. They only sample the suspicious passengers. The only occasion you see police officers is when there is a major arrest to be effected otherwise the best they do is patrol the common areas of the airport without molesting anyone, not even those escorting the passengers or seeing their loved ones off. This is the template I have observed and I believe we need to emulate. As I recorded in the intervention alluded to above, I am not convinced that the Department of State Security needs to have any presence at the airports, otherwise the police, anti-corruption agencies and other sister security outfits may need to be equally be at the airport. All other enforcement agencies watchlist their suspects through the immigration portal. If anything, they may have unpronounced office within the building, certainly not feasible to the passengers. I am sure we need more of the various officials outside the airports, particularly men of the State Security Service, to carry out surveillance and intelligence in the country. It is my view that their presence at the airports is wasteful. We need to put the officials to maximum use elsewhere. The NDLEA equally thrives on intelligence and need not be stationed permanently at the airports. There is abundant technological device to detect any illegality easily now. The country only needs to invest in this than the manual barbaric way of dealing now. The scanning area need to be reduced to one. The existing two now is meaningless. The equipment can be deployed elsewhere where such is presently needed and lacking. I must not conclude this conversation without noting the embarrassment nigerans escorting their loved ones are subjected to. They are currently banished to the main road competing with the moving vehicles, with threats to their lives. We need not dehumanize our people this way in the name of maintaining security. Areas meant for them is cordoned off irrationally. This attitude certainly is not nice. In rounding off, we need courteous and well-trained officials at the airports and not bullies.
