The request for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to move its headquarters to Lagos has been justified by the agency. Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, instructed the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to relocate its headquarters from Abuja to Lagos. Olubunmi Kuku, the Managing Director of FAAN, asked the agency’s Director of Human Resources and Administration to assess the implications of the relocation order in an internal memo dated January 15, 2024. The memo, titled “Relocation of FAAN Headquarters From Abuja to Lagos”, requested information on the effects of moving the operations of FAAN headquarters to Lagos. The total staff strength of FAAN was 5,308 as of December 2015, divided among technical (1153, 21.72%), non-technical (4154, 78.26%), and executive staff (1, 0.02%). Obiageli Orah, the Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at FAAN, has reiterated that the relocation of the headquarters was deemed to be in the best interest of the authority in a separate statement issued on Thursday. The decision to move the headquarters to Abuja was ill-advised, as there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all employees at once, according to Orah. The Authority has returned to Lagos because there is no office space for them in Abuja. The Minister has decided to stop the waste of public resources and rip-off on the public purse. The minister’s other option was to abandon the old FAAN building in Lagos, which would have led to a waste of resources, and to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of naira of public money when more than sixty percent of its activities are in Lagos. FAAN will maintain its management of the existing building in Lagos, which is capable of accommodating all directors and senior officials, until concessionaires construct suitable offices for FAAN in both Lagos and Abuja. Operational offices in Abuja remain fully functional, with no reduction in operations, and the decision was purely technical and does not impact the ongoing operational structure in both cities.
FAAN has said that relocating its head office to Lagos will result in a reduction in cost
