Brand-New Helmswoman at FAAN Olubunmi Kuku Hit the Ground Running
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Mrs. Olubunmi O. Kuku, Managing Director, FAAN, in the company of her team, on inspection at the Abuja Airport, listened to the Regional Manager’s response to her question
The brand new Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, MD/CEO, of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Mrs. Olubunmi Oluwaseun Kuku, since she assumed office, has had numerous briefings. One can safely predict that the crux of most of the briefings, memos, and submissions would have pointed to the grim fact that the task to surmount in the behemoth called FAAN, requires one not of faint heart, but a daring skipper. One that will constantly be at her wit’s end yet, deploying more cerebrum-induced strategies to map out solutions on how to surmount different challenges ingrained in each of about 24 mostly unviable airports oversight has to be exercised.
Without an iota of doubt, the tasks are daunting. From fixing safety-critical infrastructure on the runways, making facilitation exclusively digital, deploying self-service equipment, provision of adequate fire cover to enable international airlines to return to some airports and save Nigeria, and Nigerians from embarrassment before the comity of nations.
To those with scruples, what can be more embarrassing than when billions of naira investment were announced to have been made for adequate modern fire fighting equipment yet, international airlines by the premium they placed on safety, abandoned the airport of destination but landed at another airport for obvious safety issue. Henceforward such disgrace is sure would not be a nice fragrance for the present government advocating Renewed Hope to savour.
Numerous pieces of evidence have shown even to uncanny observers that providing leadership in creating a niche for our airports cannot be a tea party. Yet, the helmswoman has been very stoical in all her few public appearances and exuding the very much confidence desirous of a skipper that will not settle for excuses for not hitting the targets.
An instance was at the passing out parade of the aviation security cadets in Lagos last December. She assured the young officers that her management would fulfill all obligations in making the security personnel as vibrant as they could be, and as proactive as the best avsec that can be gotten in the best of climes.
Succinctly put, her address elicited Renewed hope for the cadets. Even the first management meeting with those acting directors oozed out hope for the improvement of every facet of the services dispensed to all the categories of airport users.
Olubunmi Kuku set the task at that meeting and volunteered the expected outcome. One of which is the drastic improvement in the EFFICIENCY with which the airport services are dispensed to its various customers. That, she vowed would become a a hallmark of our airports. The good news stakeholders are anxiously looking forward to its fruition since it is attainable.
At the meeting with the newly appointed directors, the same issues came up and FAAN management unanimously agreed on the imperative to do things differently, to up the ante in all facets of service delivery in the entire airport chain the skipper is mandated to exercise oversight.
Fast forward to last Thursday, 11th January, all the recently appointed directors, and the agencies’ chief executives were inducted into the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development processes and procedures to enable them to function seamlessly without running afoul of extant laws guiding the service delivery of public officers.
At the induction conducted by the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman, she charged the CEOs and Directors to align with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, PBAT, and through quality service delivery, afford the populace feel a sigh of relieve right in the horizon.
Akin to what members of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, entered with PBAT, the 48 directors and 6 Chief Executives also signed a performance bond with the minister, barrister Festus Keyamo. Mrs Kuku with her team immediately thereafter, set out for Abuja airport and conducted an inspection tour of some of the ongoing projects at the facility.
Optimizing the precious resource, time available, for maximum coverage of the task to perform found relevance in one of the African proverbs in which the squirrel nimbly hopped on the ground but found itself right on a tartan track, and got inserted into the race without much ado. This explains the on-site inspection.
Nigerians are eager to see their airports on the top chart of Airports Council International, ACI-Africa Region assessment of leading airports by all its parameters.
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