By Abimbola Ogunnaike
The Federal Government has confirmed plans to reduce the number of security checks at the country’s airports.
The development comes as the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria(FAAN) and the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) partner to cut down on multiple security checks at Nigerian airports.
The Managing Director of FAAN, Olubunmi Kuku, who made this disclosure at the weekend, said multiple airport checks have become a menace in Nigeria.
“On the issue of checking my baggage, it borders me so much, and that was the first inquiry that I made when I assumed office. As far back as 2011 and 2012, when I was in the industry, I worked on this with the former Minister.
“It goes beyond FAAN, a lot of those agencies, Customs, NDLEA, Quarantine, Agriculture, we now have EFCC, we have almost everybody at the airports, we had Executive Order 001 during the Buhari administration to move them out under the then Vice President office, now we have the National Single Window, I have personally sat with the NSA over the last five weeks to have conversations with him as to how we will streamline the facilitation.
“We have agreed on a few things; the first one is a short-term intervention where we reduce the number of agencies at the airports because we have some that were doing just sort of routine checks, just moving around to observe rather than disturbing passengers,” she stated.