The federal government of Nigeria has increased surveillance and also deployed more personnel and equipment to the nation’s airports to prevent incursions into the facilities by unauthorised persons and criminals.
This was disclosed by the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Captain Rabiu Yadudu, who said between May and July this year, the security apparatus and personnel had foiled 187 attempted security breaches at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos..
Yadudu who argued in an Interview with THISDAY that the security situation had improved also disclosed that every airport under FAAN’s management has a security committee, which meets every week, pointing out that under emergency conditions, the committee ensure it meets every day until such threat was tackled and resolved.
Furthermore, Yadudu told that FAAN has also embarked on sensitisation and effectively involved host communities and deployed personnel for intelligence gathering.
“They work with those at the airports and environs to ensure that any security threat is envisaged and pre-emptively eliminated,” he said.
The FAAN boss also disclosed that to prevent the incident of kidnapping that happened at the Kaduna International Airport’s staff quarters earlier in the year, the agency was collaborating with the Nigeria Air Force and the Kaduna state government to ensure that there are no security breaches at the airport.
“In order to prevent what happened about two years ago at the Lagos airport, 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 sensitisation generally. “What we do, apart from our increased surveillance, training and equipment, is sensitisation because even people working within the airport environment need to be more sensitised. We get reports and our personnel have increased their surveillance.
“A lot of people have been apprehended for attempted security breach at our airports, including Lagos. Between May and July, the security apparatus had foiled 187 attempts and this shows that our airport system is really working.
“We just installed brand new x-ray machines at the Lagos airport recently. We installed about 15 at the Lagos airport alone and more will still be installed. Even, the walk-in machines, we have new machines installed there. We also deployed L3 scanning machines. We have networks working with the host communities. A lot of what we do is very discreet,” he said.
