The managing director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, George Uriesi, has commended the level of improvement the agency has witnessed under his leadership.

While speaking on Sunrise on Saturday, Mr Ureisi, explained that the reasons why visitors to Nigerian airports experience certain challenges including inadequate seats; improper air conditioning, is as a result of the out dated equipment.

According to him, airports are living organisms. You continue to construct and develop them but Nigeria has been sleeping for over 30 years after opening the last airport in 1982.

“In any country where you go to sleep with something as critical to the country’s economic development as airports, what we have now, what we inherited two years ago is what you find.”

The aviation system which he described as a ‘derelict and decrepit’ is what has made Nigeria’s flagship airport, Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, a “national embarrassment and shame.”

“You sweat because the air conditioning came with the building in 1979. The generators came with the building in 1979, as well as the lifts and escalators.”

“What do you expect?” he asked.

However, he assured that the agency is “now changing everything” despite the limitation placed on them by available resources which necessitates a system of prioritization which determines what issues will be fixed first.

He added that the agency has done ‘miraculously well’ in the two years, since its revival.

Corruption In Aviation

The Director General of NIMET, Anthony Anuforom, hinted that huge corruption in the sector led to the broken-down state of the aviation sector.

While referring to the report by a committee, headed by air marshall Paul Dike, which recommended about N40 billion intervention fund to address airport infrastructure and safety infrastructure, he said that “if the funds were utilized at that time, perhaps the rot (my colleague referred to) probably wouldn’t persist up until 2011 when the present management of the ministry came on board.”

He disclosed that there is also another N6.5 billion sector project which was investigated by the Senate and is currently in court.

Anuforom was a director in one of the aviation parastatals in 2005-2006, in the Obasanjo regime.