Travel at risk as vandalism of airports critical equipment spikes

By OLUSEGUN KOIKI, Lagos

There is palpable fear about safe flying in Nigeria as vandals have continued to sabotage critical safety equipment across the nation’s airports and stations.

A source close to some of the agencies confided in Daily Indepen­dent that equipment of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) are regularly van­dalised across the country, while the affected agencies spend millions of naira monthly to replace the damaged or vandalised equipment.

It was gathered that the Doppler weather radar of NiMET is vandalised almost every month in some airports.

The source said that it costs the agency about N100 million to acquire and install the safety equipment at each airport, while it spends about N55 million regularly to replace any vandalised Doppler weather radar equipment.

Doppler weather radar is used to locate precipitation, cal­culate its motion and estimate its type like a thunderstorm. It can measure how fast rain or storm is moving towards or away from the radar.

This equipment is critical to safe flying, but their continuous vandalism is giving aviation stakeholders and professionals source of worry, warning that safety may be compromised if the dastardly act is not nipped in the bud.

Besides, it was gathered that the navigation equipment of NAMA in stations and airports, especially at Iju (Lagos), Warri (Delta) and Port Harcourt are regularly prone to vandalism by hoodlums, while efforts to curb the act had mildly been successful over the years.

Prof. Mansur Matazu, Direc­tor-General, NiMET, told Daily Independent over the weekend that most of the equipment of the meteorological agency were regularly vandalised by hoodlums, thereby causing the agency millions of naira to replace them.

According to him, in a bid to reduce the risk of negative weather phenomena like low level wind shear systems and other possible moving weather systems, NiMET installed neg­ative instruments, which are sensitive and capital intensive, but regretted that persistent damage of these equipment ruined the efforts of the agency.

He mentioned some of the equipment installed in at least 24 airports and stations to in­clude Doppler radar system, Runway Visual Range (RVR) and Low Level Windshear Alert System (LLWAS), but lamented that NiMET spends several millions of naira regu­larly to replace them once they are vandalised.

Matazu, however, said that in a bid to reduce the wanton act, NiMET introduced an alternative method of moni­toring and forecasting using a numerical weather prediction system.

He said: “NiMET being a service provider especially in the aviation industry and also weather and climate ser­vice provider in the general socio-economical arena of the country is faced with several challenges. Basically, the major challenge I encountered imme­diately on arrival at NiMET was the issue of vandalism of our airport safety equipment across the country.

“In order to reduce the risk of negative weather phenom­enal like low level windshear system and other possible mov­ing weather system, NiMET installed negative instrument, which are very sensitive and they are all capital intensive like Doppler radar system and Runway Visual Range (RVR) across all our 24 airports and specifically for the four major airports, we have independent weather forecast offices.

“Some of these instruments have sensors installed in them, even at airports that have pe­rimeter fences, we have very serious challenges of vandal­ism and I will give an example of this. Low Level Windshear Alert System (LLWAS) has eight sensors, if more than three are down, it will not give a clear picture of the windshear and it is a major hazard to air­craft either landing or taking off.”

To safeguard its equipment from vandals, Matazu said that the agency had engaged security outfits to monitor the facilities.

He said this had hugely reduced the theft of its equip­ment, but said some of the in­struments are still vandalised by hoodlums.

On the poor state of Port Harcourt International Airport (PHIA) due to poor facility and theft, Matazu insisted that its equipment at the airport were topnotch and functioning at optimal state.

He, however, said that the agency also suffers equipment theft at the airport, but insisted its Doppler radar is one of the best across the nation’s airports.

He attributed high level rainfall in the Niger Delta area to some of the challenges fac­ing smooth flight operations in the area and appealed to air­lines and pilots to always yield to weather advisories from NiMET before embarking on flights to the geo-political zone.

He said: “I think the Niger Delta experiences more than 300 raining days and that shows we have more than nine months of active raining activities over the year. So, we mostly advise pilots to yield to weather advisories and also engage our airport personnel. At Port Harcourt airport, we are upgrading our instrument now that we have visuals and also we have installed meteoro­logical signals.

“Port Harcourt in terms of our instrument is very okay now and we have to deploy an automatic weather delay sys­tem, which passes information to the Air Traffic Controllers (ATC). The most important thing is to yield to the weath­er advisories and passengers should be very patient with air­lines when there are delays due to bad weather. Delays happen all over the world, but the most important thing is communi­cation.”

Besides, a source close to NAMA confided in Daily Inde­pendent over the weekend that there was no month navigation equipment of the agency is not vandalised either at airports or stations.

According to the source, the management of NAMA is spending millions of nai­ra annually to replace some of the damaged cables and equipment, stressing that such amount of money could have been channeled towards pro­curement of other safety equip­ment and training of personnel.

The source said: “As far as vandalism is concerned, our equipment sometimes are in remote areas, particularly the navigation equipment. Even in Lagos here, the Very High Frequency (VHF) Omnidirec­tional Radio Range (VOR) is in Iju and other isolated places. Possibilities are there that some of these equipment would be vandalised.

“But, to address it, we try to provide security for our equip­ment, but as you know what is happening in this country, it doesn’t mean that such equip­ment cannot be penetrated. We have lost several millions of nai­ra to the activities of vandals in the last one year. We will contin­ue to provide security, fencing in stations and other areas.”

He was, however, silent on the amount of money spent on provision of security to its equipment annually.
Recall that in May, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu, Managing Director, NAMA, had told the Senate Committee on Aviation that the agency’s navigation equip­ment are regularly vandalised at stations and airports.

Akinkuotu specifically said that such acts put air safety in jeopardy.

Akinkuotu had explained that NAMA invested in navi­gation aids in recent times, but some of the assets were regular­ly vandalised and called for im­proved security for the agency’s assets at airports and stations across the country. (Daily Trust)