Airport Will Temporarily Shut, Disrupting a Nigerian Lifeline
Kaduna said that You close the airport for six weeks, it’s unheard-of.
Emmanuel Onyekwena said that Everybody is worried in Nigeria,
They have said repairs should take no more than six weeks,
but skeptical passengers accustomed to unfulfilled government promises worry that work could drag on for months.
Not all of our staff can go there," said Aliyu Oladimeji, a manager whose baggage-handling
company still hadn’t decided how it would sort out employee salaries during the shutdown.
The people who make decisions are here." The Abuja airport opened in 1982,
and it hasn’t had a thorough resurfacing since then, said Henrietta Yakubu, acting general manager of the corporate affairs for the Department for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
Some international airlines have decided to reject the government’s plan to fly to Kaduna
and instead are rerouting flights to Lagos until the Abuja airport is operational.
The closing will also upend the lives of children who sell bags of six or seven peanuts in the shell, of men who push luggage carts for a fee, of people who hawk manila folders stuffed with a type of spicy beef jerky, of money changers
and phone credit sellers — all of whom rely on travelers to manage their precarious financial situations.