The story you are about to read is not for the faint-hearted. Let us note that this has nothing to do with the billions of dollars made by Nigeria’s flagship airport in Lagos, but spent, wasted or stolen by some profligate public officials. We shall leave that aspect to the relevant law enforcement agencies to deal with in the fullness of time.
We are more concerned with saving lives of Nigerians from the unrepentant bloodsuckers running and ruining the once magnificent Murtala Muhammed International Airport. This special investigation by The Boss newspapers is meant to alert the citizenry about the dangers lurking around that continuously dilapidating airport and wake up the Buhari government about an ugly menace that must be confronted urgently.
Never mind the cosmetic renovations that went on for years under the Goodluck Jonathan Administration. Please, forget the hype about the endless beautification of airports nationwide. What we are bringing to you is the unreported shame of Africa’s biggest nation at its main gateway. We had tried in the past to talk about the terrible situation at our flagship airport on social network platforms hoping someone would see it and respond accordingly but that never happened. What we have now discovered is even far worse than we could ever imagine.
Let us start from the very beginning. This iconic edifice was built over 30 years ago during the Murtala/Obasanjo regime. The job was substantially activated and actualised by Obasanjo. The contract was awarded to NACO BV (Netherlands Airport Consultants) and the company built six airports in Nigeria in the 70’s including the big one in Lagos. NACO has been in existence since 1949 and has been involved in over 500 airport projects globally, most recently in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Abu Dhabi and Beijing. They built the popular Schipol Airport and the Murtala Muhammed International Airport was a smaller model of the airport in Amsterdam. They were invited to Nigeria about five years ago by a private company hoping to bring the shine back to the MMIA under a Public Private Partnership arrangement but this arrangement was truncated by the usual government bureaucracy and long-winding officialdom. The government operatives were prepared to maintain the status quo in other to bring in some quack and antiquated contractors like Princess Stella Oduah did. The result of their failure is what you will see as you go through the pages of The Boss newspapers today.
What welcomes you to today’s MMIA is what used to be a very active car-park, now abandoned to the vagaries of the elements and sometimes overgrown with weeds, in which lunatics and area boys compete to make their hideout. The place is a major security threat to one of the busiest airports in Africa. This car park was supposed to have been converted at a time to a luxury hotel but that project never materialised till this day. The ugly sight used to be covered somehow by the ingenious banner ads of Afro Media, one of Nigeria’s foremost advertising agencies, before Princess Oduah came with the hurricane that tore the airport apart. She came fully prepared to sack all sackables and changed agreements already entered into arbitrarily and a dictatorial regime of fear was installed.
As your vehicle pulls up at the frontage, you are instantly accosted by a barrage of gun-totting police officers, trolley porters, traffic wardens and a motley crew of other security operatives depending on the season. At the entrance, a baggage security screening machine has recently been mounted. By the door a group of police officers screen passengers and their companions and request to see your passports and tickets before you are allowed to go in. Here, it is presumed that all tickets have been purchased before approaching the airport. Nobody has told these officers that most airlines have ticket sale offices in the airport and that you may be coming to book a reservation or pay for one already made. Arguing with the officers on the fact that the airport is also not just about who is travelling but also about those accompanying them may fall on deaf ears or elicit anything from total refusal, to verbal assault or reaching a gentleman’s agreement depending on the power of your tongue or pocket. For a foreigner leaving Nigeria this is where he can easily confirm that the President’s anti-corruption battle has not yet begun to bear fruit.
CHECK-IN PROCESS
Check-in in here is not always so simple. There is no provision whatsoever for automated machines and bag drop offs. You must queue up first to weigh your luggage and then join another queue where you see an agent who confirms your passport and ticket and directs you to take your luggage to an assembly of airline security, Customs officers, Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Quarantine agent, etc. for a manual search of your luggage. Each of the aforementioned uniformed operatives meticulously rummage through your bags and try to bully you if, for example, you are carrying food or commercial articles. The passengers know what to do unofficially for the prying eyes so that the bags can pass through the eye of the needle.
At the check in counter, your bag is weighed again and the airline baggage handler lets you know he is very loyal and expects you to thank him in a special way. But you can’t blame him because his salary is too poor to cover the cost of his transportation to and from work alone. The number of people you have to see before you can Check-in is so dizzying and nobody seems perturbed by the fact that it is only in Nigeria that you see such attention to detail without seeing the benefit of such close scrutiny.
CONVENIENCES AT MMIA
By the time you finish your check-in rituals, you would have been thoroughly exhausted and the next thing you need is a decent washroom. But don’t bother because you won’t find one unless you are travelling Business or First Class and you can visit one of the lounges or pay if you are not a premium passenger. The best lounge around is easily Gabfol, the only place fitted with a brand new lift, free Wi-Fi, six shower rooms, modern toilets, full kitchen, smoker’s lounge, five-sleeper chairs facing the tarmac. It is the preferred lounge for the Obasanjos, the Soyinkas and many famous personalities. There are other lounges belonging to ASL, SDS and Oasis which service most of the airlines. These lounges especially SDS also provide a high degree of service and are to be commended. Air France, British Airway and Virgin Atlantic have their own dedicated lounges which are reasonable although they are nothing compared to airline lounges maintained by these airlines in other countries where they do less profitable business. Gabfol raised the bar of airport lounge hospitality after investing heavily in world class facilities and deploying culinary services that are truly international and very African. All the other lounges had to follow suit. The worst lounge should be the best. This is the Protocol lounge of the Foreign Affairs Ministry which is the exclusive preserve of foreign dignitaries, top government functionaries and senior recipients of the nations Honours. The furnishing is archaic and there is no entertainment or refreshment whatsoever. The place is like a phantom sitting area.
Washrooms
The stench oozing out of the regular toilets often overpower the nostrils of arriving passengers. It is what welcomes them to the airport. It is always shocking to enter a toilet and find humans turned into cretins who welcome you with tissue paper and bowls of water to wash your hands and mop up the room after you’ve left. The boys and girls expect you to tip them for staying inside that odoriferous prison. We appreciate that there is massive unemployment in the country but it is no way to redress the situation by providing meaningless, useless employment.
DUTY FREE SHOPS
For a major international airport MMIA is a disgrace in this area. Hawkers chase you with all manner of food items like kilishi which are outlawed by most countries and so cannot be exported anyway. Except for a new perfumery section that recently opened, most of the shops are crass and classless. Beside the congested duty free shopping outlets is an open mosque for Muslims to pray. No effort has been made to keep the place away from other passengers and staff of the airport. Very soon, Christians of different denominations may decide to congregate somewhere within the airport and no one would have the justification to stop them.
BOARDING YOUR FLIGHT AT MMIA
Finally, you think you are ready to take off in a few minutes and you approach your assigned gate. What do you find? A group of airline agents are waiting to check your passports, rummage through your carry-on luggage and and frisk your body. Suddenly you may realise that the door of the bridge or jetway leading to the plane is firmly shut. This happens mostly if you are embarking on a regional journey. You will now find yourself re-directed in the opposite direction to climb down the stairs and walk through a door by another stinking toilet and trek to the plane. If it is raining, it is good luck to you. It is the last experience you remember as you depart Africa’s biggest nation and may be the same whenever you return.
ARRIVING INTO MMIA
For the first-time visitor to Nigeria, his or her initial experience at our foremost airport is enough to make him want to turn around and board the return flight out of hell! As you disembark a hot gust blows into your face. You must be very careful as you try to navigate your way to the arrival hall because the corridor leading from the plane into the main terminal building is plagued by a lot of major problems. There is no lighting and the place is quite dark with no iota of ventilation so that if you arrive during the hours of darkness you are likely to fall flat on your face after taking a few steps. The carpets are threadbare for the most part in some cases they are so worn that they have ripped and if you are unlucky your carry-on luggage or your foot may be caught in the torn parts. If you are unlucky to arrive on a day after it has rained a bit, prepare to be soaked or even slip and fall as the roof and the ceilings need urgent repair.It is not an uncommon sight to see buckets placed all over the place to collect rain water. Reminds me of the games we played in my childhood when we tried to help our parents collect water from rainfall as there was sometimes no pipe borne water.
You will curse yourself if you arrive Nigeria on one of the jumbo jets with all facilities on board only to disembark and realise there are no proper facilities to speak of. There are no elevators/escalators working 90 percent of the time. The newly (or was it refurbished?) carousels and conveyor-belts are already falling apart. Many bags get torn before they roll out on the belts. There was a special report on this in the Thisday newspaper of November 27, 2015. You have to pay for trolleys and there is no card payment facility available. A first time visitor won’t even know what to do. Passengers are instantly turned to beggars looking for how to pay. Before now, the MTN sponsored free trolleys for all passengers but some powerful syndicates suddenly cancelled the deal. While it is true that you pay for trolleys in many foreign airports nothing stops Nigeria from being part of those that are the exception. Nigeria needs to attract tourists and one of the ways is the ease of passage at its international airport.
INFRASTRUCTURE AT MMIA
On a bad day, lights usually go off for hours at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos. This was the case on November 18, 2015, the light went off from 8.50pm till the following day before it was resolved. It is probably the worst show of rascality and shamelessness on the part of the airport management. The frequency of power outage in an airport is a sacrilege anywhere in the world but not in Nigeria. The officials keep giving excuses when power is a high security issue in airports. One only needs to consider that people can come and go freely as they wish in the ensuing darkness to realise how the lives and security of passengers and the nation is thus endangered. There are indications from informed sources in the aviation sector that power outages are opportunities for saboteurs to do illicit things and award emergency contracts with cash disbursements under the cover of desperate situations.
The air-conditioners are grossly inadequate. It is the norm to sweat like a pig almost everywhere in the airport except of course the offices of the airport officials. Nobody considers the debilitating effect that heat can cause. No palliative like cold water is offered to suffering passengers. People just go about their business as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
It is also always a tough time for arriving passengers because the car park is very far from the airport. People sometimes have to lug their heavy baggage from the main terminal building to the car park without any form of assistance.
The main terminal building is an accident waiting to happen. The Boss made incredible effort to take pictures of the underground car park in the basement area. The putrefied smell that welcomed us was potent enough to resurrect the dead. The place is accessible to normal and abnormal visitors as well as rodents. It is possible from what we saw that the foundation might be weak because no one seems to have checked in a long time and there is apparently a lot of rust and decay on critical parts of the infrastructure. We should let the pictures take over here.
The roads leading in and out of the airport should wear glittering looks in normal climes. Money is not an issue because the federal agency running its affairs makes so much money out of which this could have been done. The toll gates are said to generate amazing income for the airport but it is sad this doesn’t reflect in the environment.
IS MMIA JINXED
The question on most lips is: why is it so difficult for a country that parades some of the most travelled people in the world to build and run a world-class airport? The answer is simple and straight-forward; too much interference from government. The Nigerian aviation sector is overburdened by too many federal agents and duplicitous characters feeding fat and doing nothing. Members of the private sector who invested their personal funds were ruthlessly dealt with and most were endlessly frustrated till they gave up. Those who remained owe their banks amounts running into billions. Court judgments are ignored and disregarded by these sacred cows who are usually under the protection of their godfathers. Can these problems be fixed? The answer is YES!!! All that is required is a will to do so coupled with diligence and patience.
WELCOME TO PARADISE AT MMA2
If there is any reason to believe that Nigerian aviation requires an urgent intervention it is the awesome performance by Bi-Courtney at the Murtala Muhammed Airport 2 only a stone throw from the International terminal. The success recorded here is an eloquent testimony to the power of private entrepreneurship and a condemnation of overbearing governments in business. There is no point trying to imagine the horrendous treatments meted to the owners of this airport by different government functionaries. MMA2 has been rated the best in the whole country. No matter its imperfection, MMA2 has demonstrated its capacity to do what the humongous Federal might was not able to achieve.
Some of the major facilities at the terminal, according to a document from Bi-Courtney obtained by us, include:
A passenger drop off canopy
- A departure and arrival hall, with holding capacity for 4,000 passengers, equipped with state of the art information display and public address systems
- 45 check-in counters equipped with common user check-in systems andbaggage handling facilities
- A waiting area for families of travellers, Meeters & Greeters’ lounge
- Total CCTV coverage with analytics for surveillance and investigation
- 2 conveyor belts for departing bags
- 2 arrival baggage carousels
- Two 2000KVA generator and two 1500KVA generators
- 5 dual view x-ray machines for carry- on luggage
- 2 dual view x-ray machines for checking-in baggage
- Rapid scan x-ray machines at cargo terminal and arrival hall
- 10 elevators, 5 escalators and two panoramic lifts
- 4 Self check-in kiosks
- 4 e-gates
- Easy access for disabled passengers, buggies, wheelchairs and specially designed elevators and toilets
- 6 boarding bridges and 4 bus departure gates serving 8 remote aircraft parking positions
- 4 Cobus 3000 passenger buses in place to serve the 8 remote parking positions
- Retail and office space featuring travellers’ support facilities
- Meeting rooms & Conference Hall
- An automated multi-storey parking for 800 cars directly linked to airport terminal
- A Drivers’ Lounge on every floor of the car park
- Fully equipped clinic with ambulance services
- Currently home to 77 tenants, including 6 banks, top range pharmacies, international clothing lines, prestigious retail brands and aFood Court.”
This is what a small regional airport should be. If the powers that be had allowed the same level of development and efficiency at MMIA, Nigerians would have reaped the benefits of travelling without tears. All manner of spurious excuses have been concocted to deny Bi-Courtney the full implementation of agreements reached at its conception and inception with the aviation authorities… (to be continued)
source:boss magazine
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