The statement was published by his media aide, Jude Ndukwe, in response to a SaharaReporters story revealing that Mr. Fani-Kayode regularly violates security procedures at airports.
The media team employed by the former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has stated that airport officials allow Mr. Fani-Kayode to breach airport security as a display of camaraderie to the former aviation minister.
The statement was published by his media aide, Jude Ndukwe, in response to a SaharaReporters story revealing that Mr. Fani-Kayode regularly violates security procedures at airports.
“What the reporters and their paymasters mischievously misinterpreted as a breach of security is obviously the effusive show of camaraderie and support to the former minister by management and staff of the airports,” Mr. Ndukwe said.
“We wish to state that management and staff of airports, especially in Lagos and Abuja which Fani-Kayode uses most often, have been carrying out their duties, including screening of passengers, most professionally and in a friendly manner. Fani-Kayode has no reason whatsoever not to submit himself to such wonderful people in the discharge of their responsibilities as any breach also has the capacity of putting everyone, including himself, in danger.
“The professionalism and friendliness with which airport management and staff carry out their daily duties despite the biting economic hardship in the nation today is part of the enduring legacies which Fani-Kayode is proud to have bequeathed to the aviation industry and no amount of mudslinging by the likes of SaharaReporters can change that,” the statement further read.
Several airport sources had narrated three different occasions between March and September 2017 when Mr. Fani-Kayode refused to submit himself for security checks before boarding flights.
Our investigations also revealed that in 2006, before Mr. Fani-Kayode became the Minister of Aviation, a terminal manager of Murtala Muhammed Airport at the time, Taiwo Okuyiga, stopped him from traveling for refusing to submit himself for security checks.
Barely two months after Mr. Fani-Kayode assumed office, Mr. Okuyiga was redeployed to a different airport and subsequently resigned from his position as terminal manager.
Mr. Okuyiga’s wife, Faramade Adelabake Okuyiga, explained that her husband was transferred to Yola and retired unceremoniously.
“I can confirm that Femi Fani-Kayode has been breaching the airport security procedures even before he became the minister,” Mrs. Okuyiga said.
“He was stopped on one occasion in early 2006 by my husband, Taiwo Okuyiga, the then MMA terminal manager. Upon his [Fani-Kayode’s] appointment in November 2006, his first assignment was to transfer my husband to Yola and he was retired eventually by him in December 2006. He ended his career abruptly within the twinkle of an eye,” she told SaharaReporters.
