The Federal Government has declared dates for the reopening of Kano, Port Harcourt, and Enugu airports for international flights. “We will be opening Enugu airport on the 3rd of May 2021, Kano on the 5th of April, 2021 and Port Harcourt on the 15th of April, 2021 for international flights,” the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika disclosed at the weekly meeting of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 yesterday.
Sirika said, “There have been concern for us to open Port Harcourt, Enugu and Kano and of course, it takes a huge amount of work, allocation in the management of this virus to be capable of opening ore departure up other areas of entrance.
“We will do only at a time what will be good for the management of this virus; it is very painful especially for us in civil aviation to have our airports closed and our direct source of income affected as we are finding it extremely difficult to pay salaries. “So, we closed the airport with great care and when we shut down the airports, we had to keep them running otherwise the facilities in there will get ramshackle for lack of usage.
So, it is in our duty to keep them open but unluckily, we couldn’t because of our organized health and good of the country and those that do business with Nigeria.”
President Buhari had in March 2020 declared the suspension of International flights to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Domestic flights were also suspended and later freed in September 2020 .Moreover, the reopening of International flights were being confirmed in batches beginning with Abuja and Lagos International airports.