A leading civil Rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION
OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has condemned the Federal government for
deliberately refusing to invest substantially in the building of
aviation infrastructures at the Akannu Ibiam International Airport and
for closing down the airport without commencing repair works several
weeks after.
The Rights group has also condemned the tepid and unsustainable excuse
that lack of fund is the reason for not commencing repair works to
improve safety facilities at the only international gateway to Igbo land
South East of Nigeria several weeks after Nigerians were deceived that
the facility needed to be shut so as to enable government do the
necessary repair works. HURIWA demanded explanation from the Aviation
authority for openly lying that work had started few days back only for
vigilant media to visit the facility Yesterday to discover that
Nigerians were sold a dummy since not a single repair works is going on
there.
HURIWA has therefore decided to petition the National Assembly to
protest the deliberate scheming of the minister of Aviation, the Katsina
born cousin of the President Alhaji Hadi Sirika to frustrate passengers
going and coming from South East of Nigeria and subject them to
horrendous ordeals even when the closure of Abuja international Airport
for similar repairs did not face similar fate of shortage or lack of
operational fund. HURIWA said the government decided to abandon the
South East of Nigeria and specifically the shut airport because the
South East politicians have not followed up and mounted pressure on
government to do the needful and end the denial of the fundamental human
rights to freedom of safe movements to the citizens of South East of
Nigeria.
“It is unbelievable that the current administration has extended the
willful marginalization of the South East from the lack of strategic
security and top federal appointments to the shutting down of the only
international entry to the South East which is the Akannu Ibiam
international Airport. When Abuja international Airport was shut for
repairs, the Kaduna Airport got rapid face lift gulping billions and the
Federal Highway to Kaduna was fixed even as special security forces were
deployed to provide twenty four hours security services for all
passengers. But the Akannu Ibiam international Airport was shut down and
for months there has been no repair works and the Enugu/Owerri Federal
Highway has collapsed, the state of insecurity is so high on the same
stretch of road with suspected armed Fulani kidnappers operating within
that axis but the government simply neglected the Igbo speaking
nationality as if they are second class citizens.”
” HURIWA will not be deceived by the propaganda of the Aviation minister
that funding hitches may have caused delay in the rehabilitation of the
Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, which was shut down by the
Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) on August 24 this year.
Does it then means that the Minister for Aviation, Hardi Siriki who was
in Enugu in August who told reporters after a meeting with governors and
stakeholders in the South East zone that the airport would be reopened
before Christmas was simply lying? Was this not the same minister who
had assured that the rehabilitation work would come with installation of
lighting devices and other gadgets to enable the airport to operate
night flights that could culminate in additional flights? Why sell the
dummy of lack of fund when the same treatment was never extended to
Abuja airport?”
HURIWA recalled that six weeks after closure of the airport,
reconstruction work is yet to begin, even as there are no indications
that the contractor would mobilize to site soon because as the media
found out the contractor that handled the dilapidated runway in 2010 was
afraid of mobilizing to site as he was not sure of adequate funding,
especially since there would not be any break in the work when it
commences.
Recall that the Ohanaeze Ndigbo had earlier raised the alarm over the
closure of the airport without funding and award of contract for its
rehabilitation, expressing fears that the deadline may be missed.