Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber, the Senate, has asked the nation’s aviation authorities to ensure tighter security at airports across the country, in the aftermath of the latest security breach at one of the airports.
Last week, an errant driver broke through two security gates manned by Nigerian Air Force personnel and rammed his vehicle into a plane as it was boarding passengers for a flight from the Margaret Ekpo International Airport in the Southern city of Calabar to the inland capital city of Abuja.
The plane was quickly evacuated and the driver arrested. The government has ordered an investigation into the incident.
In a similar breach a couple of years back, an Air France plane coming to land at the nearby Port Harcourt International Airport collided with cows that have strayed onto the tarmac.
The Senate, through its panel on aviation, said the lapses called into question the country’s airports’ security.
In a statement at the weekend, the committee charged all the agencies concerned, especially the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), to carry out a thorough investigation into the latest incident and expressed the hope that this time around they would make the result of their investigation public, with a view to forestalling future occurrence.
It said the agencies should also put in place structures and efficient machinery to check unnecessary incursion of unwanted persons at the tarmac and the entire airport environment.
