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… Declares Enugu Airport Unsafe
The National Assembly Joint Committee on Aviation has decried the deplorable state of the domestic wing of the Port Harcourt International Airport Omagwa, particularly the arrival section of the terminal building which is undergoing remodeling.
Senate committee chairman, Sen. Muhammad Adamu Aliero and his House of Representatives counterpart, Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, among other committee members, expressed displeasure at the slow pace of work going on at the airport.
The remodeling exercise kicked off about five years ago simultaneously in four major international airports in the country with three others completed and commissioned while work is still ongoing at the Port Harcourt airport.
The NASS joint committee, which was on tour of facilities at the airport, described the state of the unfinished terminal building as very deplorable, regretting that the Port Harcourt International Airport has become a ghost of what it used to be
The Senate committee chairman noted that the National Assembly had between 2015 and 2017 appropriated funds for the completion of the remodeling of the airports across the country, but regretted that the contractor handling the Port Harcourt airport, Inter Bau Construction Company, has not performed up to expectation.
Though the new terminal of the international airport, being handled by the Chinese Engineering Construction Company, is near completion, the committee faulted the pace of work, adding that the contractor should have delivered since March last year.
In a report on the state of other airports visited previously, the leader of the delegation, Sen. Adamu Aliero said the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu was “terrible. The infrastructure is in a very serious degree of deterioration. There are potholes in the runway which is very much unsafe for aircrafts to land,”
He also noted that the toilets were in bad shape without any running water, while there were no approaching lights at the runway, which would be impossible for aircrafts to land at night.
Aliero pointed out that the contractor should be summoned to do remedial work at the airport otherwise it would scare all international airlines as well as the local ones.
The House committee chairman on Aviation, Hon. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha said the situation at both airports need urgent attention, stressing that the contractors and all others connected to the work at the airports must answer questions. “As committees, we’re not going to leave any stones unturned, we’re not going to look at faces, people must answer questions and failure to get satisfactory answers, those people must be brought to book and prosecuted” she said.
