The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has installed 15 new scanners at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos.
This is to beef up security at the nation’s busiest airport.
Managing Director of FAAN, Capt. Hamisu Yadudu who disclosed this said more scanners would soon be installed in Lagos and other airports across the country, adding that scores have been arrested this year for attempted security breaches.
Yadudu who briefed newsmen at the MMIA at the weekend ahead of the Airports Council International (ACI-Africa) Security Week being celebrated across all member airports from 25th to 28th October 2021, declared that the authority had taken steps to mitigate insider threat at all its airports.
The maiden Security Week with the theme: “Promotion of Security Culture in African Airports” would be used in sensitizing airport users and communities around airports about the import of security.
It would be recalled that there have been several security breaches around Lagos airport, the busiest in the country.
One of such was in 2019 when a suspected stowaway made an incursion into the tarmac and attempted to grab an aircraft that was about taxiing.
Since that incident and others experienced in the past, the MD explained that the authority had carried out a thorough risk assessment and enhanced security at all airports.
He said, “We just installed brand new scanners at the Lagos Airport last week; we installed about 15 at the Lagos Airport alone and more will still be installed.
“Even, the walk-ins, we have new machines installed there; L3 scanning machines. I think five is the walkthrough and an additional 10 are the scanning machines. We don’t talk too much because we don’t want to be distracted as an industry.
“We have a lot of people who have access to the airport. Naturally, security is not a static process, but a living process.
“We may have a security today that is 100 per cent and in the next one hour, you will have a report that there is a new danger, breach or a new possibility. So, security is like a race, but what we do is to be far ahead in the race.
“So, when we have those issues and some attempted to breach the security about two years ago, we did a very thorough risk assessment and what we found out prompted us to enhance security, increase the heights of the fence, improve on the sensitization generally.
A lot of people have been apprehended for attempted security breach at our airports, including Lagos, but this shows that our airport system is really working.”
The MD further disclosed that a new check-in system by RESA has been fully deployed in two airports while installation is ongoing in airports in Enugu, Kano and Port Harcourt.
He said, “All the airlines have keyed into the new system. The current agreement we have with RESA is all-inclusive and it also involves security functions.
“If there is a need to raise the flag on any passenger, we can always do this. We are fully back and improved on whatever we had in the past.
“We are fully reloaded now. What we have now is a 10-year commitment and it is renewable. All the five international airports are fully in this. We have two fully installed and other three are being installed.”
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