By Cosmas Okereafor
The Managing Director/ CEO, Federal Airport Authourity of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs Olubunmi Kuku today reiterated that, her commitment is to ensure that every passenger passing through the gateway is safe and secure at all times.The FAAN boss made this statement at the Nigeria Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF), event put together by aviation journalists, Wole Shadare and Gboyega Adeoye, where veterans, past and present aviators were honoured for their contributions in the aviation industry.The Authority’s boss who declined speaking on why Uber exited from Nigeria maintained that, FAAN’s primary concern always is to ensure the comfort, and safety of its passengers plying the airport roads, adding that, Uber may have reasons that pushed them to close the Nigerian market which they operated in the last twelve years.While clarifying a few thing she said made round in the last one week, the FAAN boss stressed that, the authority received complaints in the past from passengers who patronized some of thee –hailing service providers. “I work for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, and my responsibility, first, is to ensure that our passengers are safe, they’re protected, and they have a seamless passenger experience.
‘For Uber, I can’t speak to their exit from Nigeria. I am sure they have their own economic and regulatory decisions as to why they choose to exit. But a couple of things are very clear. “What was important for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria is to ensure that we addressed passenger concerns. We did receive a lot of concerns, especially around the December holiday period, about passengers who took some of the e-hailing but I don’t want to mention one or the other. Some of those who used e-hailing services, and even the car hire services had very terrible experiences. Some of them went all the way from intimidation, to being dropped in other places, and even more extreme situations.”We did have situations where some of the Uber and Bolt drivers would get down from their cars under the guise of coming into the airport as e-hailing drivers, and they would join the car hires to charge higher fares. Based on this, it was important to look into it because everybody was complaining about the touting at the airport”.
Mrs Kuku also hinted that, the app currently being used in the area presently is to assist passengers to know who is carrying them and the operating company which according to her was very important for safety and security reasons. “The app that was developed was strictly to focus on the fact that you have visibility on who the car hire companies are, you know who the driver that is taking you from Point A to Point B is. FAAN does not collect money on behalf of the drivers. Those car hire drivers are not FAAN drivers. All we do is to give you a sample of the rates based on the destination that you’re going to. “The car hires by nature have always charged a higher fare, because their reason is they’re only going from one point to the airport and returning to the airport. It is the choice of the passenger whether you want to pre-book your cars, whether you want to use the e-hailing app, or you want to use the car hires. “We have no jurisdiction over that. The only thing that I have a responsibility to do is to ensure that you have visibility over who is driving you and those within our airport.”One of the things that we were struggling with the e-hailing companies was largely around liability clauses. So they wanted us to give them dedicated pickup zones, which we agreed to, but we also wanted them to take responsibilities for the drivers. But we were told that those drivers are not the drivers of Uber, rather they’re independent drivers. So any safety concerns that we had, they wanted the passengers to use the safety features; they did not want to take up that responsibility, and we had a major issue with that”, she stressed further.
