Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku, MD, FAAN
Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku has clarified that touting, passenger solicitation, and security vulnerabilities led the Authority to introducing regulatory measures to ensure safe operations of e-hailing and commercial/car hire operations within the airports’ environments.
Speaking on Friday at the second induction ceremony of some aviation personalities into the Nigerian Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) held in Lagos, she said FAAN’s first responsibility is to ensure that passengers are safe, protected and have a seamless experience, hence the need to go all out to address concerns and threats to safe operations.
She disclosed the Authority, around December 2024, had received series of complaints and concerns about their (airport car hires and e-hailing) operations, coupled with unprintable incidents that could traumatise passengers, adding that it immediately swung into action that would enable it curb such scenarios.
Kuku however dissociated FAAN’s activities from Uber’s predicament and why it exited Nigeria some days ago.
“In recent weeks, I have seen a lot of information in the media, but I think what is important to clarify is this. I work for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, and my responsibility, first, is to ensure that our passengers are safe, they’re protected, and they have a seamless passenger experience.
“For Uber, I can’t speak on their exit from Nigeria. I am sure they have their own economic and regulatory decisions as to why they choose to exit. But a couple of things are very clear. What was important for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria is to ensure that we addressed passenger concerns. We did receive a lot of concerns, especially around the December holiday period, about passengers who took some of the e-hailing—so I don’t want to mention one or the other—but used some of the e-hailing services, and even the car hire services, who had very terrible experiences. Some of them went all the way from intimidation, to being dropped in other places, and even more extreme situations.
“We did have situations where some of the Uber and Bolt drivers would get down from their cars under the guise of coming into the airport as e-hailing drivers, and they would join the car hires to charge higher fares. Based on this, it was important—because everybody was complaining about the touting at the airport—that we provided even some sort of regulatory oversight on the car hires.”, she said.
The FAAN boss also disclosed that the App that was developed was strictly to ensure visibility on who the car hire companies are and for passengers to know who the driver that is taking taking them from Point A to Point B is.
“FAAN does not collect money on behalf of the drivers. Those car hire drivers are not FAAN drivers. All we do is to give you a sample of the rates based on the destination that you’re going to. Now, it’s also important to note that the car hires by nature have always charged a higher fare, because their reason is they’re only going from one point to the airport and returning to the airport. It is the choice of the passenger whether you want to pre-book your cars, whether you want to use the e-hailing app, or you want to use the car hires—we have no jurisdiction over that. The only thing that I have a responsibility to do is to ensure that we have visibility over who is driving passengers and those within our airport.”, she added.
Revealing some of the issues around the operations further, Kuku said: ‘One of the things that we were struggling with the e-hailing companies was largely around liability clauses. So they wanted us to give them dedicated pickup zones, which we agreed to, but we also wanted them to take responsibilities for the drivers. But we were told that those drivers are not the drivers of Uber, rather they’re independent drivers. So any safety concerns that we had, they wanted the passengers to use the safety features; they did not want to take up that responsibility, and we had a major issue with that.
” Again, I’m sure that they had their own reason and I know that they had been considering exiting Nigeria for a while, which is indeed why we had a stumbling point with them. Sonit has nothing to do with FAAN. Again, the airport is just a small jurisdiction of the area that they cover within Nigeria.”
Recall that the standoff began after FAAN moved to enforce the Airport Car Hire Rank Management System (ACHRAMS)—a digital queue-management platform designed to curb touting and insecurity around the the airports.
However, the system’s integration triggered sudden service suspensions across popular e-hailing platforms, stranding passengers and forcing them to rely on traditional airport taxis with significantly higher fares.
But FAAN had since reiterated that passengers remain free to choose from available transportation options that best meet their needs after it cleared Bolt for operations.
