Airport Manager Makes Case For Second Runway

The Airport Manager of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, Mr Mahmud Sani has said that the need for a second runway for the airport is long overdue.
He said that it was only the Abuja airport that does not have an alternative runway in the country, inspite of the position Abuja occupies as the Federal capital.
Sani who disclosed this to newsmen in an interaction in Abuja Tuesday, explained that other International Airports like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano and Kaduna have Airforce bases that could serve as alternative runways.
According to him, the recent approval of loan by the Senate of the Federal Republic would help the government to realize the ambition of having a second runway for the Abuja airport.
The airport manager also disclosed that the Federal Government through the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) was at the stage of engaging a consultant that would review the design before it could be presented to the tenders board.
On how much the project is expected to cost, Sani said that the airport authority would not know about it until the design was reviewed by the consultant that would be engaged.
The Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts recently carried out an inspection of the proposed site for the construction of the second runway for the Abuja airport, following the request by President Muhammadu Buhari for Senate to approve the sum of $5.5 billion foreign loan for construction of a second runway at the airport.
The National Assembly had also in the 2017 budget, appropriated N10 billion for the runway project