The Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, has announced the closure of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja for the repair of the airport runway.
Sirika, who did not say when the closure and repair would be carried out said that the runway is currently riddled with pot hole.
The minister, who engaged aviation stakeholders in an interactive session in Abuja, presented gory pictures of the runway in a slide presentation.
“At the sight of the runway, I was tempted to close the Abuja airport. I probably will close it still. You need to look at the runway.”
Sirika said that the situation has further exposed the need for a second runway in Abuja, and that with a second runway, “you don’t need to shut down an airport when one runway goes bad as the other will be in use.”
The airport was first shut down in July 2014 to give way for the fixing of some ruptured parts of the runway. In two weekends in July, the airport was shut for about 60 hours altogether.
An estimated N500 million was believed to have been lost as a result of such the closure. [myad]
