25th September, 2013
Simon Ateba/Aviation correspondent
Electricity has been restored at the Murtala Muhammed international airport in Lagos, western Nigeria, following a power cut on Wednesday.
“The power outage which mostly affected the ‘E’ Wing of the terminal was caused by an underground armoured cable fault, leading to billowing of smoke in the affected area,” said Yakubu Dati, spokesperson for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN.
Dati said the outage did not affect operations at the terminal but some services were temporarily shut down to enable engineers effect repairs to the damaged cables.
“FAAN regrets any inconvenience the brief power outage caused airline passengers and operators at the terminal,” said Dati.
FAAN assured the public that such power outage will soon become a thing of the past when the power improvement project at the airport, involving the installation of six ultra modern generators, is commissioned.
“The new generators are being test run and will soon be commissioned,” Dati said.
P.M.NEWS learnt that an electrical fault that burnt some vital cables and broke down the digital system, caused the outage and triggered long flight delays.
“The system broke down and they were doing check ins manually,” passengers said.
Apart from the digital system breakdown, the newly installed conveyor belt also malfunctioned on Wednesday.
Some airlines were delayed for as long as five hours, exhausted passengers and relatives said.
Arik Air flight to London, which was to leave Lagos at noon, eventually took off at 5pm, witnesses said.
“God should help us in this country. You’re remodelling the airport and not doing it well at the same time,” a passenger who didn’t want to be named said, sending a strong message to Stella Oduah, Nigeria’s minister of aviation.