Steps Underway To Reduce Security Checkpoints, Agencies At Airports-FAAN MD

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has disclosed that steps are being taken in conjunction  with the Office of the National Security Adviser to reduce the number of security checkpoints  and government agencies at the nation’s airports.

Team@orientactualmags.com  learned that Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku,  who said this while talking to journalists in Lagos on Saturday, added that measures are being taken to reduce instances of  personnel having  physical contact with both the passengers and their baggage at the nation’s airports.

  She said  FAAN and the office of the NSA have agreed to carry out short and long-term measures to address the issue including the creation of a joint coordination room where all the agencies can view CCTV cameras to ascertain what they are looking for.

Kuku described the idea of multiple security checkpoints at the airports  as disturbing  while disclosing  that it was  the first  issue  she had inquired about on assumption of office.

‘On the issues of the checking of baggage, it borders me so much, and that was the first inquiry that I made when I assumed office. As far back as 2011 and 2012, when I was in the industry, I have worked on this with the former minister.

It goes beyond FAAN, a lot of those agencies, Customs, NDLEA, Quarantine, Agriculture, we now have EFCC, we have almost everybody at the airports, we had Executive order 001 during the Buhari administration to move them out under the then Vice President office, now we have the National Single Window, I have personally sat with the NSA over the last five weeks to have conversations with him as to how we will streamline the facilitation’ she said.

Kuku has also talked about the immediate steps that would be taken on the issue.

‘We have agreed on a few things, the first one is a short-term intervention where we reduce the number of agencies at the airports because we have some that were doing just sort of routine checks, just moving around to observe rather than disturbing passengers.

The second is the longer term, a joint coordination room, we do have cameras, so we are asking all of those agencies, depending on what it is they are looking for to move to the joint coordination room to look at the cameras and observe and for those that are more concerned with the baggage, they can move down to where we load the bags, that way they have better visibility than disturbing passengers’ she submitted while recalling what had led to the idea of checking baggage directly.

‘I believe that came about a couple of years ago, a lot of countries had issues with scanning devices that were coming from certain countries, and as such they require secondary screening. You will see that some of the airlines have companies doing secondary screening on their behalf, but a lot of passengers will think that it is FAAN because we are the face of the agency and the airports’ she added-Team@orientactualmags.com  Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com.  Thank you