AIR travelers using the Murtala Mohammmed International Airport in Lagos are complaining in the face of hardship encountered as a result of strengthened security procedures near the domestic wing of the airport facility.
After intensifying during the holiday festivities, it subsided in the initial days of the new year. The new security measures have resulted in traffic snarl on the Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way in Ikeja, which is the main access road to the airport, stretching all the way to the environs of the Lagos Country Club.
The development also affected traffic along the nearby Oba Akinjobi Way, Oba Akran Road and Agege Motor Road, with some travelers going to catch their flights alighting from vehicles and resorting to trekking.
One such traveler, Mallam Yaro Abubakar, told newsmen that he had to make his way on foot because he did not want to take chances.
“I have a 1. 00 p.m. flight to Abuja and I have been stuck in this traffic snarl since 11.00 a.m. I had to disembark from the cab taking me to the airport under the Ikeja bridge, beside the gate of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and resort to trekking.
“When I pass the anti bomb squad check point, I will join the airport shuttle bus to the terminal for my flight, ” he said.
Mr Uche Chimezie, who was travelling to Port Harcourt, said many people heading for the airport had lost a lot of time to the checks.
“I am supposed to catch a flight to Port-Harcourt by 2.00 p.m.; assuming I left home later than I did, I would have missed my flight,’’ he said.
Chimezie said that the situation was further compounded by the restriction of commercial motorcycle operators from operating within the airport surroundings.
A worker with one of the airlines, who sought anonymity, enjoined the anti bomb squad to install metal detectors at the two gateways leading to the local and international wings of the airport.
He said that it would relieve workers and passengers the stress of staying long in traffic while security agencies conduct security checks on vehicles entering the airport