Cause of Abuja Airport Runway Blackout Revealed

 Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah

The cause of the runway blackout at the nation’s second busiest airport, Abuja, at a peak period last week, is beginning to emerge.
The incident occurred at a time when there was heavy traffic as many aircraft were arriving and departing.
The light failure at the runway, which damaged the image of Nigeria in international circles and brought again to the fore the question of how safe  the nation’s airports could be, left many concerned authorities chasing shadows in their effort to explain what happened.
The Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, had exonerated the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and insisted that the power outage was caused by faulty generators the airport was using.

But a reliable Daily News papers' investigations revealed that it was not power outage that caused the failure of the runway lighting, but a fault occasioned by poor maintenance that forced out the last breath of life from the lighting system.
This was discovered when the system in the airport was closely examined and it was discovered that they were damaged due to poor maintenance, and so there was urgent need to replace them immediately. continue reading