The Federal Government has ordered all international airlines to vacate the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, MMIA, from October 1, 2023.
This was announced on Thursday by the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, during a tour of the international airports in Lagos, accompanied by the Managing Director of Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Kabir Yusuf Mohammed, along with other aviation stakeholders.
The directive is to give room for the total maintenance work at the airport, Keyamo directed the airlines and companies operating in the airport to move to the new terminal – MMIA Terminal 2.
He said: “The major complaints of Nigerians or foreigners coming into the country have been with this old terminal. That place is an eyesore. The lifts are not working, the entrance is unwelcoming.
“Airconditioning systems are not effective, among other things, and we have this new terminal that the Chinese built which is under utilised.
Although, there have been lots of questions as to why the new terminal is not being utilised optimally, the simple reason is that the new terminal was designed without provision to take big planes. I wondered why that happened.
“I have been asking questions as to how they would design an international gateway such as the Lagos airport terminal two without a provision to take the big planes.
“We do not have the avio bridges that can even connect with big planes, which is also a challenge. That has been the problem we have not been using this new terminal. It would interest you that, 60 per cent of FAAN’s revenue comes in from the Lagos gateway. It is one of the major gateways into the country.
So what is the solution to this? I have said we must use what we have for now. I have told them that I am giving the international airlines, and every other company utilising the facility till October 1, 2023, to move from the old terminal to terminal 2.
“What we are going to do temporarily is to shut down the old terminal and sort out all the issues regarding the renovation.
So like many other countries, we are going to do emergency procurement to buy the big buses and move them to where the big planes stop in an orderly fashion, both arrival and departure so that you can have some kind of comfort with this new facility.
“The long term plan is that we are going to find a way to build avio bridges for the big bodies coming in.”
Festus Keyamo also suspended all contracts, projects, concessions in the sector until further notice.
“There are issues already on ground, before I came in, like concessions, Nigeria Air, among others, all of that for now have been suspended until I brief Mr. President as to what is happening regarding all of those noises.
“I always appreciate his honesty. He brought me here to correctly advise him, so I’m looking at all the agreements and everything that was signed to correctly inform him.
“I owe my total loyalty to Nigerians to have the best of aviation services, and to Mr. President, and that’s what we are doing.”
