Lagos Airport Set For Upgrade As FAAN Moves To End Manual Checks

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, or FAAN, has finalised plans to install new security equipment driven by artificial intelligence (AI) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport’s screening area, or MMIA, in Lagos.

Director of Aviation Security Services, DASS, FAAN, Afegbai Igbafe, said as soon as the installation of the screening machines and monitors was concluded, customs tables would be removed.

He spoke to newsmen during an airport at the weekend, saying FAAN would upgrade the machines to include six different monitors, one for each of the six agencies at the airport, to enable officials to sit and monitor baggage directly from their screens.

He said, “The tables you see will be a thing of history; you will not see any table here. There will be no physical contact, because what we are also doing is that when we fix those monitors and the machines dictate unaccepted objects, the concerned officials will take the passenger and his or her baggage to designated areas for physical checks.

“The designated areas will also have CCTV cameras. This is to ensure the passengers are not being exploited. When the machines dictate something, the Aviation Security, AVSEC, calls the relevant agencies, such as the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, Customs, and quarantine, amongst others, to follow up.”

On AVSEC’s collaboration with the NDLEA in terms of drug investigation, he said, “Before we bought the new machines, our machines were not detecting some drugs, but with the new machines, we will start to train some of the security agencies, like the NDLEA, the DSS, immigration, and quarantine.”

Meanwhile, Head of Department, ICT at MMIA, Chima Oge, said one of the new pieces of equipment, the Orion 927DX machine, would help in expediting the identification of organic materials.

Oge: “It has features that would help with the identification of organic materials accurately and quickly, either in range mode, which highlights the areas based on the range selected by the operator, and/or in interactive mode, which provides the operator the option to display the areas based on the value of the pixel.”

However, an aviation security analyst, Group Captain John Ojikutu, retd., faulted the acquisition of the machines.

Ojikutu said, “Would this stop the foreign airlines from stopping their secondary hold-baggage screening? I very much doubt it. The machine can not work alone but is operated by someone. The machine may be TSA approved, but have the foreign airlines discarded secondary screening for their hold luggage or checked-in luggage and are now relying on the FAAN baggage screening? After the Abdulmutalab exit through the MMA, the TSA bought and gave us a body-screening machine for free. What happened to it after a year is what we were asking ourselves and should be asking ourselves today.”