By John Ikani
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and other relevant aviation authorities have commenced investigations into unraveling how a mangled corpse found at the runway 18Right of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport got there.
The discovery was made on Thursday, a statement signed by FAAN’s General Manager of Corporate Affairs, Faithful Hope-Ivbaze, said.
“A motorized cleaner, that was cleared to carry out a derruberization and sweeping of the runway discovered the remains at about 0106hours, and escalated the situation to relevant departments,” the statement said.
“As a result, between 0110 and 0343 hours, the runway was temporarily closed to allow for immediate evacuation of the remains. Flight operations resumed at 0343 hours.
“Investigations are ongoing, and a report will be issued accordingly.”
Among the flights that could not land due to the shutdown was an Ethiopian Airlines flight 3907, a Boeing 77F aircraft with registration number ETAVN, which was coming from Lome, Togo to Lagos, Nigeria.
The flight was later diverted back to Lome after holding for a while.
Local media Punch reports that there have been multiple security breaches at the airport in recent years.
On December 21, 2021 a speeding vehicle almost collided with a plane attempting to take off from a runway.
This happened just over a week after a similar incident where a jet almost rammed into a malfunctioning car being tested on a runway.
In December 2019 a man was able to mount the wing of a moving plane. He was later arrested by security operatives who were informed by the pilot of the incident.
