The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo SAN, has taken responsibility for the decision to relocate the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos.
The minister emphasised that top FAAN officials and aviation unions approached him that the head office of the authority be moved to Lagos for operational efficiency.
“I take the decision; it’s a decision under the purview of a minister,” he maintained.
Keyamo during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday, said the plan as announced remains firm.
“We are going ahead. The directive has been given,” he said
The decision to relocate the FAAN headquarters back to Lagos has generated serious furore among Northern establishment, including Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and other northern groups in recent times, claiming the plan aimed at marginalising the North.
Keyamo insisted that the movement of the headquarters of the airport authority has become necessary in line with current economic and operational realities.
According to the minister, the movement of the FAAN headquarters would, every year, save the government and the people of Nigeria half a billion naira wasted on air tickets by officials of the authority who have to commute from Lagos to Abuja and back.
He said only the headquarters of one of the seven aviation agencies in the country is being moved from Abuja to Lagos.
Keyamo said when his predecessor, Hadi Sirika, moved the headquarters of all aviation agencies from Lagos to Abuja in 2020, no adequate provision was made for the principal officers like the directors and the departments under them.
He clarified that the headquarters is where the decision-makers meet, not where the largest number of workers are and not where the biggest building is.
He said over 100 of the 132 workers at the head office are in Lagos while only the directors are in Abuja — without their support staffers.
Keyamo said the whole issue was compounded with the fact that FAAN is not yet digitalised and so, in one year, they spend half a billion naira on flight ticket between Lagos and Abuja alone.
“You see them flying every day to-and-fro Abuja to get one file signed. They fly everyday back and forth. In one year, they spent close to half a billion naira on flight tickets. N450m on flight tickets alone,” he said.
