The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has partnered with the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) have concluded plans to reduce the number of military and paramilitary personnel at Nigeria international airports who have physically touched passengers’ baggage multiple times.
Multiple checks by this personnel, and investigations reveal constitutes delays and numerous inconveniences to travellers passing through the airports.
The new deal is part of the government’s rejig of security and traveling protocol at the nation’s gateways.
The government said it is committed to streamlining travelling and related protocols at airports for seamless passenger facilitation.
Over the years, complaints have been on the rise of unnecessary multiple checks of passengers’ belongings carried out by many security agencies’ officers who mount checkpoints inside terminals at 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 to be adopted to reduce the number of human contacts passengers’ belongings are subjected to.
Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku, at the weekend, disclosed that the agency and the Office of the NSA have agreed to carry out short and long-term measures 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.
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 goes beyond FAAN, a lot of those agencies, Customs, NDLEA, Quarantine Agricultural and Plant Services, 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.
“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.”
