Stakeholder lauds FAAN on commitment to facility upgrades, ICAO ranking

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has earned commendations from aviation stakeholders for its commitments to infrastructural upgrade of the Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos, and the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

The upgrade, The Guardian learnt, is in preparation of the certification of the airports by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audit.

The Lagos airport is currently number eight while Abuja airport ranks 12 among the busiest airports in Africa, but the new management of FAAN has vowed to push the two airports to the first five on the continent.

Impressed by the development, the former spokesman of FAAN, Yakubu Dati, said that the Authority’s steady transformation of the airports is commendable.

Dati said: “Since she shattered the glass ceiling to emerge the first female Managing Director of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs Olubunmi Kuku has taken bold steps to mainstream the economic reforms of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration in the aviation sector.

“She introduced a number of initiatives that are bound to improve passenger traffic in the sector with accompanying increase in revenue; non-aeronautical revenue and overall positive performance that will contribute a significant chunk to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figure of N2.43 trillion internal revenue generated by the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in 2023.

“This she has done through re-engineering productivity in all the departments, enhancing efficiency of personnel through adequate training and deploying the right tools for service delivery in a critical sector like aviation,” Dati said.

He explained that the Bola Tinubu administration has left no one in doubt that it is no longer going to be business as usual, but that all sectors must rise to contribute their quota to the overall economy.

“It is in achieving this that Mrs Kuku has proven her capacity and competence to deliver and deep appreciation of the need to make Nigeria work by seamlessly keying into the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda by mainstreaming safety in airports beyond just compliance to encompass financial, reputational, and operational advantages.

“As the helmsman of FAAN, she realised early enough that the onerous task of applying revenue from just two viable airports to service and operate 26 others across the length and breadth of the country was not sustainable. Being a financial wizkid with a B.Sc in Finance and MBA in International Finance & Strategic Management from the University of Illinois and DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, respectively, she rolled her sleeves and applied her over two decades of remarkable career marked by strategic insight and innovative thinking into handling the situation,” Dati also said.

Dati remarked that rather than allowing things to drag, Kuku set out to diversify FAAN’s revenue streams by aiming to increase non-aeronautical income through the building of strategic partnerships and incentives to boost airport revenue generation. She quickly connected the dots between revenue and safety standards and thereafter embarked on massive manpower training to build safety standards.