Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah
Charles Ajunwa
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Karamba Marketing and Media Solutions, Mr. Daniel Young, has commended the initiatives of the Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah, saying the current transformation programme being carried out by the minister would guarantee the comfort, safety and security of all air passengers including airport facilities across the country.
Young, who gave the commendation while briefing journalists in Lagos, on arrangements for the first international airport safety and security summit titled: “Getting It Right- Public Safety and Security Imperatives” to be held next month at Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, called on all stakeholders to support the minister’s initiatives to transform the aviation sector.
“The general concept of transformation in the aviation sector is one that involves everyone and it’s not going to be left to the Aviation Minister alone to do. We are all involved and it’s important that whatever little ways we can contribute to the total picture, whatever initiative that we can take to align ourselves to thoughts and ideals that the honourable minister and all the key stakeholders in the industry have put in place.
“We have looked at what the minister of aviation is doing, we have looked at what the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) is doing with the amount of money that they are expending within the airport renovating and creating the necessary ambience for passengers to travel,” he said.
Young therefore called for all agencies in the sector to synergise and see what could be done to move the aviation industry forward and to move the barriers higher so that anyone who walks into the airport environment would understand and know that Nigeria was transforming to make air travel safe and secure.
Expected facilitators at the forthcoming three-day summit include Oduah; Director General, Nigeria Aviation Authority, Dr. Harold Demuren; Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. George Uriesi; Managing Director, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, Mr. Nnamdi Udoh; and Comptroller General, Nigerian Immigration Service, Mrs. Rose Uzoma.
Others are National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.); Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Emmanuel Onyeje; Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Prof. Albert Isaac; Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau, Alhaji Mukhtar Usman; Special Aviation Security Consultant, Max Security, Mr. Oded Raz; and others.
“We looked at salient areas based on airport safety and security. We also have global terror in the aviation world, customs, immigration because they also have their own challenges dealing with security within the airport. We want to bring out those challenges and let other people contribute.
“We must not also forget the fact that not everyone who is operating within the airport environment as security agent has the knowledge of airport security. The access training is a specialised one and we also know that within the airport access officers are in charge of security but we also have a problem here because blending the different agencies, their functions and all that to bring about a holistic approach to airport has been a big problem.
That is why we said if there are five or six agencies involved in this, let come together and rub minds and let everyone understand its role in all this. Essentially, everyone involved in airport security is there for one reason; so that the airport, the passengers and goods can be moved from one location to the other in safety,” Young noted.