Airports’ physical and structural infrastructure upgrade should go together — by Kelechi Deca

Yesterday at the airport, a DSS officer recognised me and asked me about my claims about noddles because that’s his best food. We laughed over it.

I asked him when they’re going to centralise passengers security screening so that it would take just a single officer to run the checks and stamp in or stamp out a passenger. He said he is a messenger.

I told him that that’s the international best practices and in some airports passengers scan themselves through certain security checks, the systems detect flagged individuals. He agreed.

As I admire the ongoing infrastructure rehabilitation going on at the MMIA, I pray structural upgrade should follow suit especially in cutting down the levels of person to person interactions because that’s what engenders extortion and corruption at the airports.

Inbound and outbound passengers currently face a frustrating, and inefficient ritual where their travel documents are checked not once, but two or three times by different security agencies especially the Immigration, the Customs, and sometimes the Port Health or NDLEA.

This layered, repetitive process does not enhance security, something I have taken up with some senior officers before instead, it creates long queues, flight delays, and a poor passenger experience.

That is why a single, unified security and document verification point is efficiency simplified. And with modern integrated databases and shared risk-assessment protocols, one trained officer at a single checkpoint can instantly verify passports, visas, customs declarations, and health records.

Unfortunately, we have ingrained this culture of duplication in virtually every aspect of our national life, thus would need a total systems reorientation.

If we are sincerely interested in building an aviation hub that processes millions of passengers annually, then there is need to change the way we run some of these things.

More critically, multiple checkpoints expose a deeper institutional problem. Something I have highlighted on several occasions here as a lack of inter-agency trust. The agencies know. The officers know. But it has become a tradition.

When the Immigration officer does not trust the Customs officer’s verification, or when NDLEA insists on re-checking documents already cleared by NIS, it suggests poor communication, fragmented data systems, and siloed operations.

Contrary to their beliefs, this redundancy does not improve national security; it simply shifts responsibility and creates opportunities for corruption, as passengers may be pressured to “speed up” processes at each stage.

A single, centralized checkpoint that is staffed by a joint team under a unified command and backed by a shared real-time database is all that is required to reduce passenger processing time by over 50%.

Aside the above, it would restore traveler confidence, align with global best practices which is the the one-stop security model in leading airports across the world.

Last week, I participated in two different surveys on passenger experience on airports across Africa.

For me as a passenger, any airport that makes me to bring out my laptops, tablets and other electronic gadgets from my carry-on and remove my shoes is still operating on 10,000 BC era operating systems.

Modern AI systems boosted airports Airports that allow you to leave laptops in your bags and keep your shoes on because they are using 3D Computed Tomography (CT) scanners for baggage screening.

These advanced machines create high-resolution, 360-degree cross-sectional images of the bag’s contents, giving security agents a clear, rotatable 3D view, eliminating the need to isolate dense items or separate electronics.

Accra International recently installed theirs, I need to confirm if they’ve started using it, and OR Thambo International have installed these machines. Even though we have the Orion 927DX scanners, integrated with AI to remotely inspect baggage, our people still insist on physical examination.

In Asia and parts of Europe and the United States, many airports do not require you to remove your shoes because they’re using millimeter-wave scanners, which quickly scan for concealed items without requiring passengers to remove outerwear or shoes.

The inability of our agencies to work collaboratively, and not competitively signposts improvements in agency integrity ratings. Aviation is a very sensitive industry where perception runs the show.

Foreigners pass through our airports and they take notes of these things, thus when they make assumptions based on their experiences we feel hard done by such harsh criticisms.

In Naija, everything na double double.

Even inflation na double digits.

Ekwuchaalam.

Everything is connected to everything.