The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) have concluded plans to reduce the numbers of military and paramilitary personnels at Nigeria international airports who have physical contact with passengers’ baggage multiple times thus constituting delays and numerous inconveniences to travellers passing through the airports.
Over the years, complaints have increased of the unnecessary
multiple checks of passengers’ belongings carried out by the many security
agencies officers who mount checkpoints inside the terminals of international
airports.
Experts in the aviation industry have called for a
streamlining of such exercises as well a drastic reduction of such agencies
personnel while others suggest a centralised structure of checks be adopted to
reduce the numbers of human contacts passengers belongings are subjected to.
Olubunmi Kuku, Managing Director of FAAN, at the weekend
disclosed that the agency and the office of the NSA have agreed to carry out
short and long term measure to address the issue including the creation of a
joint coordination room where all the agencies can view CCTV cameras to
ascertain what they are looking for.
Kuku described the development as disturbing, but affirmed
that the issue was the first thing she inquired about upon assumption of office
adding that she personally sat down with the National Security Adviser, Mr.
Nuhu Ribadu to discuss how to streamline the facilitation processes.
While addressing complaints on multiple baggage checks, the
FAAN MD 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, this was something I have worked
on with the former Minister.”
She said “It actually 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.”
She disclosed saying “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 observed 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.”
However, she explained that the opening of passengers’
baggage was for a reason adding that “I believe that came about a couple of
years ago, a lot of countries had issues with scanning devices that were coming
from certain countries and as such they require secondary screening. You will
see that some of the airlines have companies doing secondary screening on their
behalf but a lot of passengers will think that it is FAAN because we are the
face of the agency and the airports.”
She said this however doesn’t take away from the
coordination room that we have, so we take responsibility, we are trying to
solve it.
“We are trying to have dual view cameras and put them and
explosive devices a bit farther so that we are doing a secondary check without
opening your bags.
“If you go to Frankfurt for example, even after you get off
the aircraft and go through security, for any flight that is departing for the
US and certain countries, you will see that a secondary screening happens, is
just that they are dipping their hands in your bags. Please bear with us, it is
coordination that is required not just with FAAN, the NSA has stepped in and is
now helping us vigorously,” Kuku said.
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