There is disquiet in the aviation industry over the fresh approval of N3.4bn as consultancy fee for the second runway of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, Daily Trust can report.
The second runway project has been in the drawing board since the first tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari and has seen an annual budgetary allocation for six years non-stop.
Politics Nigeria gathered that despite the desirability of the project to create an alternative landing facility for the second busiest airport in Nigeria after the Lagos Airport, experts and stakeholders in the aviation industry are befuddled over the funding patterns of the project, which they said have not been defined.
Daily Trust reports that the second runway was initially estimated to gulp N67bn. It was last year revised to N92bn.
And from 2017 to 2022, a total sum of N65bn has been allocated to the project in the annual budget though it was unclear if releases were made.
And since then nothing has been done on the project until last year when the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) allocated land for the construction of the second runway.
The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, had promised that the contract, which was awarded to China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation Nigeria Limited (CCECC), would be delivered in 12 months.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), also, had stated that 12,000 hectares of land were made available for the project.
The proposed second runway for the Abuja airport is expected to come with modern facilities like the category one instrument landing system (ILS) and other modern navigational aids.
Also, it will be more rugged but may still be 3,600 meters (3.6km), according to the design.
Despite the increasing traffic in Abuja and the frequent VIP movements that usually stall passenger flights with the attendant flight delays and cancellations, the runway project has been stalled.
Just last week, Abuja Airport was shut for more than three hours when a Max Air 737-300 aircraft suffered tyre bursts on landing at the airport.
Passengers were evacuated on the runway and the aircraft was there for hours before it was towed after inspection by the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) for the purpose of investigation of the serious incident.
The frequent flight disruptions in Abuja caused by VIP movements and unexpected incidents on the runway, according to stakeholders, have justified the need for an alternative runway in the federal capital.
