The Managing Director of the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria, Olubunmi Oluwaseun Kuku, has revealed how contractors awarded runway 18-Right at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos abandoned the project leading to closure for 11 months.
The MD who is the first female to head the office said the delay in the rehabilitation of the 3.9km runway affected activities in the airport.
Kuku revealed this in an interview on Arise TV where she explained that it took the intervention of her office, the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, and the ministry’s Permanent Secretary for the contractor to resume work at the airport.
She said, “In terms of achievements, we’ve been able to open, you know, what we call 18-Right. 18-Right is our international runway. We have two runways that serve our passengers in Lagos. We have the 18-Left, which is typically for domestic passengers, and then we have the 18-Right, which is for international landings.
“That runway had been closed since March of 2023 and was closed down for emergency repairs. It should have been shut down for six weeks. I did start in December, and that runway was still under construction.”
In March last year, FAAN shut the 18R (international) runway of the airport four months after the closure of the 18L (domestic) runway.
Construction was expected to last for eight weeks. However, the airport runway was not open by December 2023.
The MD said, “It actually posed quite a bit of a challenge to a lot of our operators, so we had the airliners who were extremely concerned. It affected the routing of passengers in terms of having to move them from one location to another.
“We sprang into action very quickly, of course, with the support of the Honourable Minister, as well as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, to make sure that we engaged the contractor and we were able to bring them back to site because they had already abandoned the project at that point.”
The runway was reopened in February 2024 which was 11 months after the closure by FAAN.