The three unions operating in FAAN at the early hours of Monday morning took over the operation of Murtala Mohammed International Airport Access Gate.
It will be recalled that the Toll Gate was concessioned, but the contract expired last year.
“Our members employed and trained to work at the access gate have been jobless. We, the unions met and agreed to picket the operators to put our members back to work,” a member of the union said.
Workers of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) yesterday took over the management of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport access gate from the Intergrated Intelligent Imaging West Africa Limited (ICUBE) one year after expiration of contract.
The workers in their hundreds under the supervision of the four aviation unions besieged the access gate as early as 7 am Monday and took over the control of ticketing points from ICUBE managers.
The workers after dislodging ICUBE staff, drafted staff of the commercial department to man the gates.
Speaking to journalists, Abdulrasaq Saidu, one of the union leaders of the general secretary of Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP) who supervised the take-over, said management of access gate remained the sole responsibility of commercial department of FAAN, adding that politicians have messed up the system through illegal concession of revenue points at the airports
Saidu said concession of the access gate was fraudulent without a review of the contract for more than five years now adding that the traffic of the route has greatly increased since the last exercise was carried out
He alleged that some individuals in FAAN and the aviation ministry have been compromised over the access gate saying that government was losing revenue from there.
Saidu explained that following series of meetings held with the aviation minister and FAAN boss at different occasions, it was made known to them that workers were going to take over the access gate and run it by FAAN commercial department to raise its revenue.
Sarah Rimdams, the deputy national president of Air Transport said workers came to recover back their revenue points to government as the contract with ICUBE expired last February.
Rimdams said the company has been remitting N68m monthly but there was need for upward review of the contract adding that commercial department of FAAN has taken over and will ensure that they exceeded the N68m being remitted monthly by ICUBE
She disclosed that the access gate was being test run by FAAN to actually know how much can be generated monthly saying that it will definitely be more the amount being remitted by the concessionsure.
Reacting to the take-over, Toluwaleke Abajing, the manager of Integrated Intelligent Imaging West Africa (ICUBE) told journalists that he was surprised to see workers and unions taking over the access gate in the early hours of Monday.
