Passengers stranded as power outage hits Lagos airport

Many passengers are stranded after power outage hit a section of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos.

It was learnt that the departure lounge of the International Airport, Lagos, was the most affected on Friday night.

“I suffered while boarding. Power just suddenly went off,” a passenger identified as Ayodele, said.

When contacted on Saturday, General Manager, Corporate Affairs of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Faithful Hope-Ivbaze, blamed “natural occurrence” for the power outage.

She explained that the incident happened past 11pm on Friday.

According to her, power was restored less than one hour after the incident.

She said, “The response time was fast. The power outage was caused by heavy rainfall. It only affected a section of the airport.

“We called Ejigbo branch of the power company but the problem couldn’t be fixed immediately because of the rain.”

Hope-Ivbaze debunked reports that the airport has been suffering epileptic power supply for the past two days.

Also, the airport’s General Manager, Victoria Shin-Aba, said, “At exactly 11:15 p.m. yesterday nite (Saturday), one of our feeders developed a fault as a result of the rain which tripped the main supply.

“In an attempt to go and put on generator, another feeder, k20, tripped the generator off. Ejigbo supply was available but on a high voltage. We then got in contact with the man on duty at Ejigbo but he could not help as a result of the rain.
“It took a while to restore the power because there was only one man on duty and the operation was overwhelming to perform within a short time. It took the Ejigbo duty officer to call the area control to help stabilise the voltage.

“However, all other generator at the terminal were in operations. At the moment, We are already on ground to troubleshoot the two faulty feeders.” (Saturday PUNCH)