By Dickson Omobola
Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, has threatened to revoke the operating licences of businesses linked to airport touting, saying investigations revealed that many of those engaged in illicit activities and touting at airports are not strangers but staff of agencies and concessionaires operating within the airport.
Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, disclosed that investigations also showed that some of the individuals involved work for trolley service providers, bureau de change operators, BDCs, and shops at the airports, who exploit passengers to make extra income.
Kuku, who spoke on FAAN in Focus, added that FAAN had stepped up engagement with the affected businesses and agencies, while collaborating with security agencies to enforce stricter monitoring measures, including the implementation of staff rosters and attendance registers.
She urged passengers to desist from patronising touts, saying many of the illicit activities at airports were sustained by travellers who pay unauthorised individuals to either carry luggage or facilitate shortcuts.
Her words: “I will say that the issue with the illicit activities and touting are two-fold: the first is that all of the touts seen within the airport environment, and from the assessments and analysis that we have done, we found out that these illicit activities are actually internal.
“What do I mean? A lot of the people you see there are not strange to the airport environment. We found out that a lot of them are staff of the various agencies that work within the airport. Whether they are on duty or off duty, they are coming out because they feel there is an additional way for them to make money from passengers.
“We found that some of them actually work for concessionaires within the airports. For example, people who work for trolley providers, shops and BDCs within the airport. We have done a couple of things around communication. We are communicating with those businesses, those agencies about the demeanor and activities of their staff.
“We are also taking it a step further. We are appealing to every Nigerian out there that as a passenger, you should not be embarrassed, you should not be overpowered at the airport. Do not encourage them. Don’t give your bags to random people at the airport. Don’t give people money because you are trying to have a shortcut.
“We found out that these illicit activities are actually being encouraged by passengers. If you don’t give them money because you want them to carry a bag for you or do something for you, they will stop being there.
“On our part, we’ve also increased our efforts. We started to engage all of the various security agencies again, and we are now asking that what we have done in collaboration with some of the security agencies is to ensure that we now enforce rosters at the airport. It’s unfortunate that we have to do this, but if this is what we need to do to clear out the touting, then we will.
“One of the things we intend to do is to make sure that we get clarity on the rosters of the people who are being posted to the airport so that we have a time and attendance register for when they need to be there. And then for those who are found to be culpable, whether they are concessionaires, whether they are staff of other agencies, then there are consequences to those businesses as well. The businesses, for example, if you have a two-time offender who is your staff, who has been caught there and has not gone to their homes or not at their place of business, we will withdraw the operating licences of those businesses as well.”
