FAAN To Decongest Physical Security Checkpoints At Airports

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria(FAAN) in collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser has concluded plans to decongest security checkpoints where personnel physically come in contact with both passengers and their baggage at airports.

The new development is on response to travellers’ continuous complaints of delays as a result of multiple physical security checks in various airports across the country.

This was disclosed in Lagos by the Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku on Saturday.

Kuku stated that the agency and the office of the NSA have agreed to carry out short and long-term measures to address the issue.

According to her, a joint coordination room where all the agencies can view CCTV cameras to ascertain their inquiry on passengers will be created.

Kuku said, “On the issues of the checking of baggage, it borders me so much, and that was the first inquiry that I made when I assumed office. As far back as 2011 and 2012, when I was in the industry, I have worked on this with the former minister.

“It goes beyond FAAN, a lot of those agencies, Customs, NDLEA, Quarantine, Agriculture, we now have EFCC, we have almost everybody at the airports, we had Executive order 001 during the Buhari administration to move them out under the then Vice President office, now we have the National Single Window. I have personally sat with the NSA over the last five weeks to have conversations with him as to how we will streamline the facilitation.

“We have agreed on a few things, the first one is a short-term intervention where we reduce the number of agencies at the airports because we have some that were doing just sort of routine checks, just moving around to observe rather than disturbing passengers.

“The second is the longer term, a joint coordination room, we do have cameras, so we are asking all of those agencies, depending on what it is they are looking for to move to the joint coordination room to look at the cameras and observe and for those that are more concerned with the baggage, they can move down to where we load the bags, that way they have better visibility than disturbing passengers.”