The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) on Friday began the sale of 2024 e-tags that would permit entry into the 24 federal airports in Nigeria.
In a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, FAAN said that the sale of the tags aligned with a presidential directive approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) .
According to it, the meeting mandated that all the users of federal airports across the country ought to pay charges at the gates.
Francis Ajaguna, Head of Public Affairs, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), told NAN that many people came to the airport and bought the tags.
”FAAN’s Commercial Department confirms that it has started issuing the e-tags and people are buying them,” he said.
No more exemption from payments for access tickets
The sale of e-tag followed Tuesday’s withdrawal of exemption of payment for tickets by some highly placed Nigerians at the nation’s airports.
Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, disclosed the new policy at the end of Tuesday’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the State House, Abuja.
He said the former system, which had cost loss of revenue, had been bought into by 1the president and the vice president, respectively.
‘’The ministry has been losing huge revenue that ordinarily should not be. With the new system, everybody coming into the nation’s airports must pay the toll gate fees. Already the president and the vice president have agreed to be part of those that would pay.’’ he said.
Before now, very important Nigerians including the president, vice president and some government officials, were exempted from paying access fees at the airports’ gates.
Mr Keyamo explained that because of the exemption, the Aviation sector loses billions of naira in revenue.
The minister said the aviation ministry was supposed to be making about N260 million from a particular airport gate but that because of the policy of exemption, it makes only about N100 million every month.
“I’ll give you another example. In one of the access gates, based on the count of the barrier going up and down, we are supposed to be making N250 or 260 million from that gate every month. That gate because of exemptions the return to us is less than N100 million every month.
“And that also, of course, breeds corruption because now you cannot track, you cannot have the audit trail of those free tags that you now give to our people to give out to people,” he said.
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