UN assures of strategies to guard against attack on airports

The President of the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Dr Olumuyiwa Aliu has assured air travellers and airport users all over the world that the UN agency is taking appropriate measures that would ensure safety at airports, especially against terror attack

The global aviation agency boss who has just ended a week official tour of Nigeria gave this assurance against the backdrop of recent terror attack on the Belgian International Airport, Brussels in which 16 people died.

The ICAO President who spoke with Aviation Correspondents in Abuja during a dinner organized in his honour by the Ministry of Aviation, disclosed that in furtherance of this, the UN agency had held series of talks with ministers of aviation all over the world says with a view to strengthening security across the globe.

Dr Aliu however said aviation security being a sensitive one, he would not disclose the strategies to be implemented but assured of collaborations with Nigeria in order to nip any threat in the bud, stressing that security was one of the critical issues in aviation.

According to the ICAO President, “Few months ago, I did send a team to do assessment in Nigeria and also in some neighbouring countries including Chad and Cameron”

Dr Aliu said ICAO was working very closely with the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology Zaria to transform the college to a regional training college of excellence as means of capacity building.
He said the level of infrastructural development and implementation has been encouraging.

On his challenges as the ICAO President, Dr Aliu said one of the challenges was to see how to raise the level of implementation of ICAO standard of recommended international practices among member countries not withstanding their level of resources.

He expressed the hope that with the determination of President Muhammadu Buhari to rid the nation of corruption that the country, especially the aviation sector would bounce back as corruption had eaten deep into the system including the civil aviation in the country.