State Security Service may release stowaway-boy today

Daniel beat security at the Benin Airport to get into the under carriage of an Arik Air aircraft, which landed in Lagos on August 24.

A security source told The Nation that operatives of the SSS might have concluded investigations on the circumstances leading to how the teenager entered the aircraft’s tyre compartment.

The source said the operatives investigated the popular thinking that the teenager might have embarked on the controversial flight out of adventure without any motive to blow up the aircraft.

Aviation authorities, including the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) are closing identified gaps in previous audit of the airport to avoid a recurrence of the incident.

Aviation security experts have challenged FAAN to step up security to forestall runway incursions at the airports.

The experts advised FAAN to go beyond patrolling the airside with operational vehicles and personnel, adding that it should deploy the latest technology that could capture the activities around the airport from the point of boarding until the aircraft takes off.

The Chairman of Aviation Stakeholders Squaretable, Capt Balarabe Usman, told reporters in Lagos yesterday that the aviation industry had suffered years of neglect, which was inherited by the present administration.
According to him, security equipment and facilities were allowed to decay. There were efforts to build perimeter fencing at the airports, especially at the major airports, but such efforts were abandoned halfway.

Another security expert and the CEO of Centurion Securities Limited, Group Captain John Ojikutu (rtd), said during the audit of airport security by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, FAAN failed to provide perimeter fencing and security fencing of the airports in 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Usman, the former chief security officer of FAAN and an aviation security consultant, also said if the agency had completed the initial projects on perimeter fencing, the situation would not have degenerated to the level where some airports do not have perimeter fencing.

“While we decry the failure of FAAN to provide adequate security at the airside of some of these airports, we have to also hail the efforts being made by the Ministry of Aviation to reinforce security to forestall such incidents happening in future.

 I know that what this government inherited in terms of airport facilities were decayed terminals, security equipment and non-existing facilities, but since it started this remodelling programme, we have witnessed what have been achieved in so short a time and we know that in a question of months, most airports will have perimeter fencing and operational vehicles,” Usman said.

“The Federal Government has started the deployment of sophisticated screening equipment at the airports and simultaneously kicked off the training of personnel to man this equipment.”

The Nation