By Amos Tauna
The Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has commended the progress of work made so far in the ongoing renovation work at the Kaduna Airport.
Osinbajo made the commendation in an interview with journalists shortly after he visited the Airport Friday on inspection of the renovation work.
He acknowledged that considerable progress had been made, stressing that more neededd to be done to ensure its readiness.
According to him, the Airport was going to be completed over this weekend particularly, the ceiling, air conditioning and security facilities.
“We think that, it may not be in a complete state of readiness by Wednesday.
“I expect that within a very very short period of time, the airport will be very usable and in a comfortable state”, he said.
He urged the contractors to speed up work and meet up with the scheduled deadline.
”We ask people working on the airport to quickly speed up or to double the number of people who are working on the ceiling and other facilities.
“They certainly need to work more faster and much more diligently to be able to deliver on schedule.
“Kaduna Airport deserves the temporal substitute for Abuja airport for both local and international flights.
“We are looking at the state of readiness considering that this is always a local airport and for that, a lot of work need to be done to bring it to the kind of standard that will be required,” he explained.
On foreign airlines declining to use the airport, Osinbajo explained, “One thing is very clear, it’s not all foreign airlines that have declined. Some airlines are willing to come to Kaduna Airport; I just spoke with Ethiopia airline and they are willing to come.
“I think that foreign airlines will, but what we need to tell them is that obviously this a temporary arrangement and they should really work with us on the temporary arrangement.
“We are concerned about safety and comfort as they are. They are here also to see for themselves, I am sure you have seen some of them.”