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PEOPLES DAILY, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2015
EDITORIAL
he August 24, 2013 episode in which 13-year-old Daniel Ihekina sneaked into the undercarriage of a Lagosbound Arik aircraft from Benin City airport, undoubtedly, exposed the perilous security situation at all airports in this country. Master Ihekina on that Saturday managed to evade supposedly alert security agents and crept into the wheel of the aircraft, clutching a traveling bag. Luckily for him, he made the 35 minutes flight from Benin to Lagos unhurt, and without causing a tragic incident. The teenage boy reportedly nursed a dream of relocating to the United Stateswhere he thought the plane was headed. Exactly 10 days after the disturbing incident on October 1, 2013, another suspected stowaway was arrested at the same airport.Leroy Ugaga, 25, said to be a psychiatric patient, was arrested by a joint patrol team of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) security operatives and Nigerian Air Force personnel while attempting to gain access to the airside of the Benin airport. The two incidents were no big surprises to many Nigerians despite the razzmatazz by the nation’s aviation authorities on the ‘transformation’ going in the sector. Indeed, Nigerians and non-Nigerians know pretty well that air travel across Nigeria is far from being the safe means of commuting that people in other parts of the world take for granted. It is true that the parameter fencing of virtually all the airports in the country is inadequate. This makes it easy
for human beings and animals to stray into the airports, thereby posing a great danger to aircraft and travellers.For example, on July 6, 2005, an Air France airbus 330 aircraft
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Stowaways and security risks at our airports Nigerians and non-Nigerians know pretty well that air travel across Nigeria is far from being the safe means of commuting that people in other parts of the world take for granted. with 196 passengers onboard ran into stray cows on the runway of the Port Harcourt International Airport, killing seven of the animals. Fortunately, all the passengers were unhurt. The porous state of the nation’s airports was again exposed late in 2010 when some of the Direct Data Capture machines for the
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registration of voters for the 2011 elections were stolen at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos. In yet another worrisome incident, Nuhu Ribadu’s running mate in the 2011 presidential election, Fola Adeola and other chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) narrowly escaped death on March 9, that year, when a chartered aircraft conveying them to Bauchi crashlanded on the city’s airstrip whose runway was overtaken by stray goats. There have been several other security breaches such as unauthorised access to the tarmacs of even the major airfields in the country due to negligence, deliberate sabotage and corruption. What is most disturbing in the case of stowaway Daniel saga is the attempt by the authorities concerned to shirk their responsibility by first blaming the Daniel incident on the Arik aircraft pilot, and ultimately claiming that such security lapses were not peculiar are to Nigeria. A spokesman for FAAN, Yakubu Dati, said that “no security system is foolproof the world over”, but he stressed “the need for vigilance on the part of all stakeholders” to make air travel in Nigeria safer. While it is true that all stakeholders must not be just onlookers, the nation’s aviation authorities must acknowledge that they have a much bigger responsibility of ensuring the safety of air travellers. And they must admit that they have failed in this regard. Of what use is the facelift they are giving the airports without securing the environments?
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