The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo has given both international and domestic airlines operators at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport until October first to relocate to the newly built terminal.
Keyamo said the old terminal will be shutdown temporarily to enable the government to carry out renovation work.
The Minister who was on a tour of the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos on Thursday, also suspended the controversial Nigeria Air project and all other thorny concession agreement in the industry until further notice.
He further stated that private hangar operators at the airport will have to relocate to a new location to make room for the expansion the runway of the airport.
He who wondered why the airport was built without the construction of avio-bridges pointed out that, that is the main reason why the new terminal has not been utilized by airline operators in the sector.
He said: “The simple reason is that, I don’t know how this new terminal was designed without a provision to take the big planes. I don’t know what happened, I been asking questions as to how they will design an international gateway like the Lagos terminal without a provision to take the big planes. That has been the problem why we have not been using this new terminal. And Nigerians have been asking that question. Meanwhile 60% of the revenue of FAAN come in from the Lagos gateway. The Lagos gateway is one of the major gateways into the country and that is the first impression when you come into the country. So, what is the solution to this? I have said we must use what we have for now, whilst I have told them that I have given them, the international airlines and local airlines till the first of October to move from the old terminal to this new terminal.
“And now, what we are going to do temporarily, is that we are going to shut down the old terminal and sort out all the issues regarding the renovation of the old terminal. There are issues already on the ground before I came, concession and all of that. For now, I have suspended all of that until I brief Mr President as to what is happening regarding all of those noises going on, including the issue of the Nigerian Air, I have given directive to suspend everything until I brief Mr President fully.
“The duty owe Mr President is honesty, he brought me here for me to correctly advise him and so I am looking at all the agreements and everything that was signed to correctly inform Mr President.
“So for now the temporary arrangement we have is that for the comfort of Nigerians, we have to find a way to use this new terminal built by the Chinese even without the big planes coming in. There is no avio-bridge for them to use. So, like it is done in so many other countries, we are going to do emergency procurement to buy the big buses, and move the passengers to where the big planes stop in an orderly fashion both arrival and departure.
“So, Nigerians 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 planes coming in and that means that some of those private hangars have to go for public purpose. We have to relocate them, if we have to do anything for them,”. He said.
