FAAN takes responsibility for passenger’s ordeal at Lagos airport

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has apologised for a traveller’s “near-death experience” while using a faulty escalator at the Murtala Muhammed international airport in Lagos.

The lady was said to have suffered a deep cut on her foot after she used the escalator.

In a statement released by the spokesperson of FAAN, Mrs Faithful Hope-Ivbaze, she said FAAN had taken full responsibility for the unfortunate incident,adding that the FAAN management had reached out to actively participate in the care for the injured.

FAAN however revealed that it was already reviewing the operating procedure for the equipment to ensure that such sudden mechanical faults do not occur again.

Narrating her ordeal,the lady simply identified as Elvi said she was at the airport with her family when her 5-year-old son insisted that he wanted to use the escalator an idea she was not comfortable with because some time ago the escalators had injured a boy.

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Unfortunately, after she agreed, the escalator developed a problem while it was being used.

According to her “On this day, he (son) wanted to and I insisted I hold his hand (there’s no place in the world we go that I’ve held his hand on an escalator). I noticed the razor-sharp edges of the escalator and it was going very fast. I looked down and the very-fast escalator had people tumbling on themselves. Humans started piling on each other. My reflex, I lifted my five-year-old in the air, he spread his legs high while I lay on my back.

“I joined the pile of humans at the base of the escalator. The only defense I had for myself was to raise my head so that only my back was bearing the grind of the escalators. A passenger snatched my five-year-old from me.

“My nine-year-old son, behind me, jumped over the railings and other passengers caught him. My husband was behind me [and] had managed to take a grip that only his back was scratched by the sharp edges. My daughter and Gloria who were behind my husband were running back up the escalators.

“Eventually some people lifted me up at the base of the death-trap called escalators. The immigration officers that were looking at us, looked away while continuing with the job at hand on which passengers will be in a net, ‘catch for the day’.” The lady had threatened to sue FAAN for the sad experience.