The Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has pleaded with the foreign airlines to shelve their threat not to use Kaduna airport as the Nnamdi Azikiwe International airport in Abuja will soon be shut down for renovation.
Osinbajo who spoke today, Friday shortly after inspecting the level ofr work done at the Kaduna airport said that though it is not all the foreign airlines that have threatened not to use the Kaduna airport, but that the renovation of Abuja airport is for the safety of all the users.
“Some airlines are willing to come to Kaduna Airport; I just spoke with Ethiopia airline and they are willing to come. I think that foreign airlines will, but what we need to tell them is that obviously this a temporary arrangement and they should really work with us on the temporary arrangement.
“We are concerned about safety and comfort as they are. They are here also to see for themselves, I am sure you have seen some of them.”
On the level of work done, the acting President acknowledged that considerable progress had been made, but that more needed to be done to ensure its readiness.
“We think that, it may not be in a complete state of readiness by Wednesday. I expect that within a very very short period of time, the airport will be very usable and in a comfortable state.”
He called on the contractors to speed up work and meet up with the scheduled deadline.
”We ask people working on the airport to quickly speed up or to double the number of people who are working on the ceiling and other facilities.
“They certainly need to work more faster and much more diligently to be able to deliver on schedule.
“Kaduna Airport deserves the temporal substitute for Abuja airport for both local and international flights.
“We are looking at the state of readiness considering that this is always a local airport and for that, a lot of work needs to be done to bring it to the kind of standard that will be required.” [myad]
