The federal government has announced that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) headquarters will be relocated from Abuja to Lagos.
Obiageli Orah, FAAN‘s director of public affairs and consumer protection, stated on Thursday that the directive was issued by Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development.
According to the agency, the directive was issued after extensive consultations with stakeholders and unions by FAAN’s new management.
Orah stated that the relocation was agreed upon as being in the best interests of FAAN and the country for a number of reasons.
Orah said:
“Those affected by the decision to move the headquarters to Abuja have since returned to Lagos as there is no office space for them in Abuja.”
“It was ill-advised in the first place to move the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all of them at once.
“Having returned to Lagos, the Authority would be liable to pay them DTA (duty-free tour allowance) because technically they are working out of the station as their official posting is to Abuja.”
In the statement, FAAN said the minister decided to stop the waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse.
“The other option open to the Authority was abandon the old FAAN building in Lagos to rot away and to use its scarce resources to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of naira of public money when in actual fact more than sixty percent of its activities are in Lagos given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports,” FAAN said.
“The stakeholders and the Minister decided against that and to save the country this waste.
“The minister has rolled out plans to get concessionaires to build befitting offices for the authority in Lagos and Abuja and until that is done, the Authority will continue to manage its old building in Lagos that can accommodate all its directors and senior officials for now.
“Abuja continues to have full operational offices and the authority has not scaled down operations in Abuja one bit.
“It is just the technical decision of where the authority has its ‘corporate headquarters’ that has been taken without affecting the structure of operations as they are for now in both cities.
“In the near future, when befitting corporate buildings have been built for the authority in both Lagos and Abuja, a final decision will be taken as to the location of the permanent headquarters, depending on the exigencies of the time.”
Last year, Hadi Sirika, the former minister of aviation, stated that the office spaces occupied by FAAN, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in Lagos would be demolished for a more ambitious plan, and that the Senate could not stop it.
Sirika stated that the goal was to transform Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed Airport into an aerotropolis, but the plan was shelved.