The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has defended plans by the Federal Government to remodel the terminal one of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos with ₦712 billion, saying the fund is gotten through the subsidy removal.
Keyamo said that the move was to ensure that the facility, recognized as one of the busiest entry port to the country, required a face-lift that ensures it meet world-class standards.
According to him, the airport terminal, built over four decades ago, has gone rusty and required rehabilitation that will ensure effectiveness.
The senior advocate stated this while responding to questions on activities of the ministry on a popular television program on Sunday.
“The roof of the airport is leaking; the place is decrepit and smelly. You see people selling Indomie and all kinds of kiosks erected there. The ceilings are failing, and the carousels are not working because their parts are not in the market anymore,” he said.
The approval of ₦712bn by the Federal Government for the project last week has triggered discontent from various quarters as critics argued that it was a misplacement of priority by the Bola Tinubu Presidency at a time when millions of Nigerians groan under all-time high inflation, hunger and skyrocketing living cost, sparked by the twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the foreign exchange windows by the government.
However, Keyamo argued that the airport upgrade would be funded “through the Renewed Hope Infrastructural Funding. It is not a budgetary kind of expenditure. It is from the special infrastructure fund”.
“This government promised Nigerians major infrastructural upgrades across Nigeria, from the savings we are having now from the subsidy removal and the floating of the naira,” he stated, adding that the project would last 22 months.
The minister said that without the rebuilding of the airport terminal, many foreign airlines would abandon the country’s route.
“Without this, some international airlines will threaten to stop flight to your country when you don’t have a good airport, a good runway, because it affects insurance because when the runways are not good, the terminals are good, the insurance will go up because they will say that place is not safe to fly to,” he said.
Keyamo stressed that upon completion, the terminal would rival continental aviation hubs in Ethiopia, South Africa and other country.
He said, “As it is today, you cannot land in Lagos (local airport) and try to connect to an international flight, maybe to Ghana
“Lagos is not a hub, but that was the plan in 1977 when it was designed and in 1979 when it was commissioned. You cannot process one passenger from one terminal to another, so that has stunted the growth of aviation.
“What we are trying to do in Lagos now is to make Lagos a very modern airport and create a proper hub to begin to compete with other hubs in Africa…So, we want to completely pull down Terminal One.
“It is not a refurbishment; we are tearing it down, only the pillars will remain, the carcass, the decking. Everything will go, and they are going to redesign now.”
