Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, and the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, have agreed to reduce the numbers of military and paramilitary personnel at the country’s international airports who inspect passengers’ belongings.
Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, weekend, said the practice was worrisome, stressing that both agencies have agreed to carry out short and long term measures to address multiple checks by security operatives.
According to her, plans were also in progress to ensure security personnel use the closed-circuit television, otherwise known as video surveillance, in various coordination rooms across the country’s international airports to monitor passengers’ luggage.
Addressing newsmen, she said: “On the issue of checking baggage, it bothers me so much. That was the first thing about which I inquired when I assumed office. As far back as 2011 and 2012, when I was in the industry, it was something I worked on with the former minister.
“It goes beyond FAAN because a lot of those agencies including Nigeria Customs, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service, NAQS, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, 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. For those who are more concerned with the baggage, they can move down to where we load the bags. That way, they have better visibility rather than disturbing passengers.”
On opening passengers’ baggage, she said: “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 think that it is FAAN because we are the face of the agency and the airports.
“But that doesn’t take that away from the coordination room 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 can do secondary checks without opening people’s 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. 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.”
