Aduragbemi Omiyale
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The corporate head office of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has been moved from Abuja to Lagos, where it was in the past, on the directive of the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo.
This development was confirmed in a statement on Thursday by the Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection of FAAN, Mrs Obiageli Orah.
The agency explained that the decision to move its corporate headquarters to its original base was taken after consultations with the relevant stakeholders.
The statement noted that it was also because the relocation to Abuja was causing a waste of scarce public funds, as the directors and other members of staff of FAAN had no befitting offices to carry out their duties.
“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,” a part of the disclosure explained.
“Having returned to Lagos, the authority would be liable to pay them DTA (Duty Tour Allowance) because technically, they are working out-of-station as their official posting is to Abuja. The Minister has decided to stop this waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse,” it added.
However, FAAN emphasised that “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.”
It was disclosed that Mr Keyamo has “rolled out plans to get concessionaires to build befitting offices” for the agency in Lagos and Abuja,” noting that the Minister did not buy the idea of using “scarce resources to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of Naira of public money when in fact more than 60 per cent of its activities are in Lagos, given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports.”
FAAN, in the statement, assured Nigerians that it would continue to act in the best interest of the public and the country, stressing that the Minister was committed to making decisions that are in the best interest of the country, especially as they concern public funds, and will not yield to ethnic or sectional sentiments that will derail this commitment.
