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 FOR
the first time, the Nigerian Civil
Aviation Authority (NCAA) on Thursday
showed a vivid footage of Farouk
AbdulMuttalab’s movement inside the
Murtala Muhammed International Airport,
Lagos and Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, as
captured by a Close Circuit Television
camera (CCTV).
At the event yesterday, the
Director-General of NCAA, Dr. Harold
Demuren, stated that the flight ticket
showed that he was allocated seat number
20B, adding that it was curious to know
why he went back to request for seat
number 19B, which he said, was the most
dangerous place to sit for anybody who
has a sinister motive, because the area
lies across the aircraft fuel tanks.
He told the audience that the new three
dimensional screening machines checked
four similar occurrences at the Lagos
airport.
The CCTV camera showed how the young
Nigerian interacted with a check-in
official, how he was screened, raising
his hands for metal detector screening,
and how he picked his luggage from the
carousel in Amsterdam airport without
being detected in these two airports.
Demuren said the new screening
requirements only exempted Presidents,
Vice Presidents and their wives from
going through screenings before their
departures.
This new rule, The Guardian learnt, was
as a result of new security measures by
the United States Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), occasioned by the
new global aviation threats as carried
out by the young lad when he attempted
to bomb an American airliner on December
25, 2009.
It was not clear whether the new rule
was communicated to the Speaker of the
House of Representatives and others who
were part of personalities exempted from
100 per cent screening in the past.
The Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, in
protest walked away from boarding a
British Airways flight to London on
August 6, 2010 when officials and crew
of the carrier insisted on checking him
thoroughly. He insisted that he fell
under the category of people exempted
from the exercise, prompting him to
travel by another airline the next day.
Speaking on the footage, which he said
was a classified material whose hard
copies could not be released to
journalists while delivering a lecture
put together by the Nigerian Academy of
Engineering in Lagos, Demuren said
immediately the footage was caught on
television, the security personnel were
interrogated on why they could not
detect such explosive materials.
He explained that they answered that
before now, passengers’ private parts
were not searched, adding that what
existed before now were machines to
detect metals on human bodies, the same
machines used in advanced countries.
Demuren disclosed that to prevent such
an occurrence, all passengers undergo
thorough security screening with private
parts not spared from search.
The NCAA chief also disclosed that the
CCTV footage, after being thoroughly
investigated by America’s Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) and other top
security agencies, they delisted Nigeria
from the list of “countries of interest”
which grouped Nigeria alongside alleged
terror countries.
According to Demurem: “Nobody is
exempted from security. It is better to
go through security to avoid
embarrassment. Only the President, the
Vice-President and their wives are
exempted and I don’t want to speak
further on it, but it is better to go
through security at all airports.”
Fielding questions from reporters after
the lecture on the state of Nigerian
airports, particularly the Lagos airport
terminal, Demuren said the terminal had
to undergo urgent repairs, stressing
that “airports are no longer built the
way the Lagos airport terminal is.
Airport terminals are built with modern
architecture.”
London Heathrow and Bole International
Airport, Addis Ababa and other modern
airports were built with steel and
glass, no longer bricks or blocks,
bringing out their aesthetics.
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