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…Says FG already planned to pull down burnt terminal
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By Chinelo Obogo
Weather equipment worth millions of naira, which belongs to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency was destroyed in the fire outbreak that burnt parts of Terminal One at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on Monday.
During an inspection of the burnt section of the terminal, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, said that NiMET’s weather-reading office, located on one of the upper floors, was completely wiped out along with several other vital installations.
However, despite the losses, he assured that weather services at the airport would continue uninterrupted through support from alternative NiMET stations until the damaged systems were fully replaced.
Dismissing claims of sabotage, Keyamo cautioned against speculation, stressing that investigations are underway to determine both the immediate and remote causes of the blaze. He noted that the affected structure was the decades-old terminal already marked for demolition and comprehensive rehabilitation, not the new terminal facility.
According to him, plans had already been in motion to relocate airlines and operators to temporary facilities provided by contractors, and the fire would now fast-track that transition.
Keyamo said: “The new terminal was not affected, it is the terminal that we are about to pull down that was affected. I won’t say fortunately because there is nothing fortunate about fire. So even though we are trying to pull down this old terminal, there were certain equipment that we also needed to retrieve. Certain persons also needed to leave the old building for us to start work on the old building.
”So let me assure Nigerians that even before this fire, if you look behind, we had already made a temporary arrangement to move most of the airlines and entities in that space to the temporary place provided by the CCECC. What this has just done is to hasten our move away from the building.
”The building was about to be pulled down anyway and totally rehabilitated. However, a lot of our equipment was damaged. This place would have come down anyway. We are just waiting for people to evacuate. ”
On the cause of the fire , the minister said: “I cannot guess. At my level, I cannot begin to speculate and get involved in conspiracy theories. But we should just have to do what we have to do now.”
