A former Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Dr. Harold Demuren has disclosed that the attempted bombing of a United States aircraft by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian underwear bomber led to improved security at all the nation’s airports.
This came even as he disclosed that the development was the saddest day of his life as the helmsman in the regulatory agency.
According to him, Omotoba had woke him up in the middle of the night to break the incident to him, but noted that the installation of modern equipment at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, revealed the entire activities of Abdulmutallab at the airport to the security team.
Demuren said that Nigeria was able to provide all the necessary documents as requested by the US, which led to the removal of Nigeria among the blacklisted countries by the US.
He regretted that prior to the incident, the father of Abdulmutallab had informed the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) of the radicalisation of his son, but said rather for such information to be shared among the various security agencies, the secutrity outfit refused to act.
He said: “Up to the 1980s, there was no major aviation security challenges in Africa. Then came the 1993 Nigerian Airways Hijack (Lagos-Abuja Flight, diverted to Niamey, Niger Republic). After this was the 9/11 attack in the US, which changed the face of aviation security in the world. Layers upon layers of security were introduced in the US”.
“In Nigeria, we had the Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab 2010 failed bomb attempt on KLM/NorthWest Airline. After this incident, NCAA ordered for enhanced multi-layered security measures at our airports, including body scanners.
“The Abdulmutallab incident was the saddest day of my life as the DG NCAA. I was woken up in the middle of the night by the Minister of Aviation who told me to go and watch the news. It was all over the news that a Nigerian wanted to kill Americans, but the CCTV footage saved us. When we were asked to provide our evidence, we were able to show it to US and what we had then, some big aviation countries didn’t have them.
“At this point, I’ll like to appreciate the contribution of the various agencies at the airport, particularly FAAN for providing the CCTV footage. The Nigerian Immigration Service that provided detailed entry and exit from the airport and the MAVIS for providing the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) information and others. These were parts of the information NCAA used to remove Nigeria’s name from the ‘US Country of Interest Watchlist.”