‘Airports Must Serve As Ambassadors’

Nigeria’s airports must wear the toga of ambassadors and excite Nigerians and visitors alike, the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mr George Uriesi, said in Abuja recently.

Fielding questions at a forum with newsmen Uriesi said it was in this belief that the Federal Government decided to give facelifts to airports across the country.

He said: “When a country starts to look at its airports, it’s a leading indicator that the country is beginning to get it right.’’

Citing examples of some African countries that remodeled their airports to world standard, Uriesi said those countries recorded a high turnout of tourists and increased their revenue generation.

He noted that Nigeria had been ‘sleeping’ in the past, but that it had awakened to the need to remodel its airport to give the country a positive image in the assessment of it nationals and those of visitors.

“We were sleeping for a long time and our airports became derelict and decrepit and it was not presenting the kind of face that our country deserves. We are beginning to deal with that now, he said.

“I do not agree that we are any less than anybody else in the world, if we want to test smartness we’d probably be among the top five smart countries in the world, but we just do ourselves in.

“And we are saying enough of all of that now, we need to now invest that smartness and make us dignify and respect our people when we use the airport; let it be a dignified and respectful experience.

According to him, “the only problem is we are doing it very late at a time when the airports had become very bad and deteriorated to the point where the airport experience had become negative no matter how you look at it.