The Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. Saleh Dunoma, has told the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on Aviation that obsolete nature of most of the facilities and equipment at the nation’s airports was responsible for the poor rating the nation’s airports got from an international travel agency.

Dunoma, who said this on Tuesday while fielding questions from senators on the reasons for the rating of the nation’s airports among the worst on the continent, lamented that the equipment and facilities at the airports like the generators, air conditioners, elevators and conveyor belts were not functioning as they were more than 30 years old.

He cited an instance when the FAAN management invited the manufacturers of a giant generator installed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos from Germany to help fix the faulty power plant.

According to him, the manufacturers said it would be difficult to fix the generator because the brand was no longer in circulation and even expressed surprise that the generator, which was as old as the airport itself, was still functional because the parts were no longer in stock.

Dunoma regretted that the facilities were being overstretched because new ones had not been acquired in recent years.

He, however, expressed confidence that efforts were being made to acquire new ones as part of the remodelling project going on in all the nation’s airports.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Aviation, Hajia Binta Bello, said budgetary provisions alone were not enough to transform the nation’s airports, stressing that a former minister in the ministry, Stella Oduah, made use of intervention funds to execute her remodelling project.

Bello lamented the state of the Port Harcourt airport, especially the departure wing, and attributed its condition to the non-completion of the remodelling project started by the last administration.

She hinted that the committee set up to work out the possibility of setting up a national carrier had concluded its work and that the ministry had submitted the report to President Muhammadu Buhari for approval.

“We are waiting for President Buhari’s approval so that we can take the draft bill to the Federal Executive Council; once it is approved, everything about the project is ready,” she said.