Activities at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, MMA, Lagos have been grounded for two days running due to lack of power supply to the airport.

A source confided in Saturday Mirror that the power outage affected both the international and the local wings of the airport.

Although, reports gathered that the airport landlord, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, switched on the generating set as an alternative at the airport, but the generating set was not capable of powering the air conditioners at both terminals.

While some offices at the airport have been thrown into total darkness since Thursday, some with power supply to their offices could not make use of the air conditioners, while users of the airport, Saturday Mirror gathered, have resorted to the use of hand fan to cool themselves
Some of the areas affected by the outage include the check-in counters; immigration areas and the baggage reclaim areas. Also, the departure wing of the airport had been in total darkness since Thursday.

But the General Manager, Corporate Communications, FAAN, Mr. Yakubu Dati, denied the existence of any outage, which could cripple activities at the airport, stressing that power outage is a national issue.

Speaking of phone with Saturday Mirror, Dati refuted that the generating sets at the airport were incapable of carrying the air conditioners at the strategic places within the two terminals.

He said: “Power outage is not an issue. It is what we experience everyday in our houses. I don’t know why that has become an issue. It is because of power outage that we have generating sets, which are capable of powering all the facilities at the airport. You are aware that if there is an outage, we switch immediately to our generating set, which have been serving the airports regularly.”

Frequent power outages have been a major issue at the nation’s airports over the years. Just two months ago, the airport experienced similar outage, which disrupted operations at the international terminal for several hours.

FAAN had attributed some anomalies in the source of power supply detected by its engineers to the outage. According to Dati, the detection of the anomalies led to the prompt shutting down of power to avoid further damage to the system.

He added that temporary emergency power was consequently provided to allow for basic check-in, baggage and security processes. He assured that the problem would be resolve soon.

He said: “The emergency power however cannot carry the air-conditioning system. In the interim, industrial fans have been mobilised to alleviate the obvious inconvenience being experienced by our passengers while our combined team of engineers are working closely with staff of PHCN to restore power in the shortest possible time.”
http://flynaija.org/power-outage-cripples-activities-at-lagos-airport/

How embarrasing! Should'nt the foremost nigerian airport have an independent power station and massive backup gen to prevent this disgrace. Foreigners flying into that place and seeing it's state just comfirms firstly all the negative things they've heard about our third world country.