MMIA: Nigeria’s open sore

MMIA: Nigeria’s open sore JANUARY 8, 2013 BY NIYI AKINNASO (NIYI@COMCAST.NET) 20 COMMENTS | credits: Bennett Omeke ven if you have no business at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria’s premier airport, you must have a stake in the central message of this essay. Put quite simply and straight, the airport is a symbol of all that is wrong with Nigeria, especially poor leadership, corruption, and inadequate infrastructure. It is Nigeria’s “open sore”, to borrow a phrase from Prof. Wole Soyinka’s The Open Sore of a Continent, in which Nigeria is used to demonstrate the ills of African states. The failure of successive Nigerian leaders to sustain the high standards expected of the airport as an international airport (modelled after Amsterdam’s Schipol International Airport) parallels the failure of African leaders to maintain high standards for African states and their institutions. In Soyinka’s book, the gradual decline of the Nigerian state into anarchy under Sani Abacha was portrayed as a systemic social, economic, and political cancer that grew from the early days of independence until it gradually enveloped the entire state. So has it been with the famed airport, named after the late Head of State, Gen. Murtala Muhammed, although on a rather different scale. What makes the MMIA’s case particularly significant is its role as the premier front door, which lets insiders out and outsiders in. Whatever bad experience outsiders have at the door is a blemish on all insiders. Against the above background, this essay is structured within two frames. The outer frame is provided by the Federal Government and its Ministry of Aviation, the institution responsible for the supervision, security, and maintenance of the nation’s airports. Between the two, the MMIA has suffered untold mismanagement and neglect over the years. It must be acknowledged that the airport has undergone changes and expansion since its modest beginnings during World War II. Named variously as Ikeja Airport, Lagos International Airport, and, from 1978, Murtala Muhammed International Airport, it served as the hub for the West African Airways Corporation between 1947 and 1958 and for the defunct Nigeria Airways between 1958 and 2003. Nigeria Airways began its decline in the mid-1980s, only a few years after the government took over its management from KLM. Plagued by mismanagement, corruption, and a poor safety record, its fleet declined from a peak of 30 aircraft to just three, two of which were leased. At its closure in 2003, the airline’s debt had exceeded $60m. Yet, the reports of several probes into the mismanagement of funds meant for the airline have been shoved aside repeatedly by the government. Like the Nigeria Airways, the MMIA has been a fertile ground of mismanagement and corruption, with telling consequences, including incessant power outages; broken down air-conditioning systems, escalators, and conveyor belts; stinking toilets, stuffy terminals, and unkempt hallways. To be sure, various administrations had embarked on some renovation or remodelling, the vestiges of accumulated rot remained. The result of present efforts by the Jonathan administration is like changing the cooking pot without changing the chef, the ingredients, and the cooking method. Customers keep experiencing the same bad taste. Inside this outer frame is an inner one, provided by two previous essays in The PUNCH by Uche Igwe (December 26, 2012) and Yakubu Dati, General Manager, Corporate Communications, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (January 1, 2013). Drawing upon his experience at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Igwe questions the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, over the botched reconstruction going on there. He queries the process, quality, and timing of the reconstruction, which pushes passengers out of the arrival and departure halls simultaneously into ad hoc tents. “Anyone who has passed through that experience”, Igwe concludes, “will bear witness that this is either a country that is dysfunctional or a government that is clueless”. Speaking for the agency, Dati puts up a spirited defence of the Minister, citing her courage in earmarking 11 airports for “undergoing reconstruction simultaneously”. But Igwe’s argument is precisely that such a massive undertaking compromises passengers’ convenience, safety, and security. He also queries the government’s involvement in all the projects, wondering if it learnt anything from the new Lagos domestic terminal, MMA2, built by the private sector. My own personal experiences at the MMIA throughout 2012 attest to Igwe’s observations and conclusions. Scaffoldings have been erected at the site of the old Parking Lot at least since 2004. One kind of reconstruction or the other has been going on somewhere inside or around the airport forever, but without appreciable relief to passengers. With Jonathan’s remodelling, the entrance and exit to and fro the airport have become a major hassle. This is particularly true of the approach road to the departure wing where passengers may be trapped for over two hours, leading to missed flights. In the absence of temporary parking near enough to the terminals, passengers often have to be picked up near the Baggage Claim Hall or dropped off near the Ticketing and Check-in Counters. That comes with two dangers: First, towing vehicle operators will hound your vehicle, not necessarily to tow it, but to harass you or your driver into paying some ransom for keeping the vehicle there temporarily. Second, you have to wade through a crowded entrance door into over-crowded ticketing and check-in counters or through a crowded exit door into a huge crowd of fake and genuine taxi drivers and unsolicited touts, who often insist on pushing your luggage-loaded cart to your vehicle or a taxi. Whether you are coming in or going out, you have to watch your luggage with more than two eyes. The relief expected after returning to one’s country is always dampened by the all-around dysfunctionality of the MMIA. It begins with the approach to the airport, where, as one expatriate once put it, “chaos and urban decay come flying at visitors like paper scraps in a windstorm”. The contrast in infrastructure and services at the MMIA and other international airports around the world is even worse. In addition to poor infrastructure, as already described, services are usually shabby. During my last return flight, those who requested wheelchairs had to be assisted down a still escalator into the immigration hall because the wheelchair lift (a rickety one at that) was not readily available. Worse still, the immigration and baggage claim halls were over-crowded. It was only after waiting for our luggage for nearly an hour that a lady came into the hall, shouting, “Delta passengers, go into the next hall for your luggage”. It was a new hall, with power outlets popping out of the terrazzo floor here and there and a make-shift conveyor belt whose circumference was too small to accommodate the passengers. Because it was raining that night, every luggage came in wet, apparently because the conveyor belt opened to the outside wall of the hall, where luggage was physically transferred onto it from the airplane. Apart from immigration officials who appeared to be doing the best they could in the circumstances, many aviation employees were rude, discourteous, and openly asked for bribes, often in some subtle or disguised language, such as “Oga, wetin you bring for us now”? Yet, according to Dati, “deliberate strategies are being deployed to change the orientation of the aviation employees through capacity development”. Such effort has yet to bear fruit. Let me put my final observation in a question form: Why can’t the airport authorities emulate their international counterparts by installing monitors everywhere to provide information, welcoming passengers, apologising for inconveniencing them with ongoing renovations, and directing them to appropriate terminals or gates and service areas at the airport? Is that too much to ask for in this electronic age? You may also like -