Travelers must climb a grimy stairwell to get to gates for boarding. The restaurant food is usually stale. The coffee is powdered. Security officers sometimes ask for a little extra something for their efforts. The bin they use for stashing confiscated items on a day not long ago held an assault rifle.
Yet for Nigerians living in the sleepy capital, Abuja, the airport with its more than 80 flights a day usually serves the purpose of getting them to their destinations, despite delays and cancellations that plague any busy airspace.
And so the government’s announcement that it plans to close the airport for six weeks starting early Wednesday to repair a runway has prompted fears about a major disruption to Abuja’s lifeline to the rest of the country and the world.
After mounting complaints about the poor state of the runway from airlines, and with safety consultants fearing impending disaster, government officials finally acceded to fixing its many cracks and holes — repairs that are 15 years overdue.
Officials decided the damage was so bad that it couldn’t be fixed piecemeal and required a total shutdown of operations. They have said repairs should take no more than six weeks, but skeptical passengers accustomed to unfulfilled government promises worry that work could drag on for months.
I passed through the low-slung airport a few times recently. Construction equipment was already in place. Passengers balled up at the entrance were in typically testy moods. I was fleeced by a man claiming he would handle my ticket purchase on Air Peace, a domestic carrier, only to realize too late that he was merely a go-between with big shoulders who could muscle his way to the front of the line.
The government’s Plan B for the airport isn’t soothing concerns. Planes are to be rerouted to a tiny airport in Kaduna, where on a typical day only a handful of flights go in and out. A new terminal being built in Kaduna to handle the influx was still under construction.
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