The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has said that the N23 billion that was budgeted to upgrade airports across the country through rehabilitations and repairs is insufficient, News About Nigeria reports.
The Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, disclosed this while speaking on The Morning Brief, a Channels TV programme.
She noted that although the 22 airports under its supervision require significant upgrades, the amount budgeted may not be enough given their deficient conditions.
According to her, the aviation sector, especially the airports, are critical in nature and extremely capital intensive, adding that lots of things require improvement including the airports, their terminal areas, their land sides and air sides, among others.
“When you refer to N23.1 billion or N23 billion, it may not actually scratch the surface if you look at where we are in terms of infrastructure development and upgrades. Yes, we do have some money earmarked for capital intensive projects this year, and maybe slightly more. What I do want to say is that the Federal Government, through FAAN, actually has 22 airports under our domain which we manage.
“Majority of those airports require that we maintain and upgrade critical infrastructure which includes the airport itself, the terminal area, the land side as well as the air side. As you know, a lot of our airports were built years back. The average lifespan of a typical runway is about 20 years, and we do have quite a number of them that have exceeded that time. We have been doing some palliative works; as such, a significant amount of the money that has been earmarked will go into full rehabilitation of the runways.
“We also have a number of our domestic terminals. By the way, we have the primary airport which is largely known as our international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano and Enugu. In terms of our secondary airports, we are also looking at terminal infrastructure upgrades. That includes expansion of fingers where passengers are departing from and improving passenger experience.
“I know we have a lot of challenges with cooling systems, HVAC systems and simple things such as electricity. A lot of the funding will be going into that. Let’s not leave out the air side infrastructure. The runways, upgrading some of the airfield lighting systems as well. For some, there is a plan to go into CAD-3. In some instances, we have looked and prioritized where we can have CAD-2,” she stated.
