By Chinelo Obogo
Passengers at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, were in panic on Thursday over a sudden power outage.
The outage was said to have been caused by a malfunctioning electrical fuse which caused a blackout temporarily in the old terminal.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) said on its official X handle that the incident was not fire related and didn’t disrupt operations.
“Today’s incident at the airport was limited to a minor wire spark in one of the units and has already been addressed. It was not a fire-related incident and did not disrupt any airport operations,” FAAN said.
This is not the first outage which has occurred at the Lagos airport this year. On Friday night, February 2, 2024, there was a power outage which lasted for three minutes at the same airport, causing panic among passengers who were forced to navigate through the terminal using the light from their mobile phones. FAAN at the time, said that the outage occurred during the process of switching power sources after losing electricity from the national grid.
On April 1, 2023, there was also outage at the airport, which disrupted flight operations, causing hundreds of passengers to be stranded. In June 2022, passengers who flew from Abuja to Benin, were transported back to Abuja after the pilot was unable to land due to a power outage at the airport.
Aviation experts and stakeholders had told Daily Sun that the frequent incidents of power outages at Nigeria’s airports is worrisome, dangerous, bizarre and unacceptable.
Aviation security expert, John Ojikutu, told Daily Sun that when power outages happen at airports, the safety and security systems are disrupted. He also said there should be consequences for FAAN anytime there is blackout at any airport.
He said the Authority should be made to pay compensation to airlines and other services providers affected by the outages.
“When such happens, a lot of the safety and security systems are disrupted and the insiders threats will be very active in their bid to invade the services operations, thereby putting people’s lives in danger particularly the air travelers in flight, those in the process of travelling in the airport and the services providers.
“Let there be consequences for power outages on the services providers. Let the services providers pay ‘due compensation to those whose operations are disrupted by their services. Let the NCAA enforce Regulations on failures or negligence of the critical services providers especially on power supply. That one major reason why FAAN cannot remain the provider of the major services for all the operators. Concession all the non-aeronautical services at the airports and return the aeronautical services to the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA). Make FAAN a holding company on the concessions facilities; passengers and cargo terminals, car parks, toll gates, land areas power supply, while runways, taxiways and their associated lightings should go to NAMA.”
Aviation analyst, Olumide Ohunayo told Daily Sun that when natural or unnatural issues occur, outages are expected but when they happen, things should be put in place to mitigate its effect on passengers.
“Most outages bring total darkness and I would expect that when that happens, there should be standby bulbs that come on when everywhere goes dark to mitigate the effect. I am also not happy with the response from FAAN. Rather than be defensive, they should apologise for the inconvenience caused, because they have charged each passenger $100 and that is N140, 000 for using the airport. So, when there is an outage and you come out to start defending your actions, it is insulting. I don’t know how you can be confident to face the public who use your airport which is the most expensive in Africa. Apology should come before defense,” he said.