By Okuneye Moyosola
The Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika has debunked claims by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), that bad weather prevented the transportation of election materials.
The Minister gave the indication on his twitter handle yesterday, admonishing INEC not to blame the postponement of elections on bad weather.
According to him, the weather was good for flight operations on the eve of elections, adding that the all airports were instructed to be open for 24 hours during election.
Recall that the INEC Chairman, Mr. Mahmood Yakubu said that flights were affected by bad weather which prevented some election materials from reaching the polling unit as they could not be transported by air.
“Unfortunately, in the last one week, flights within the country have been adversely affected by bad weather. For instance, three days ago, we were unable to deliver materials to some locations due to bad weather.We, therefore, had to rely on slow-moving long haulage vehicles to locations that can be serviced by air in spite of the fact that we created five zonal airport hubs Abuja (North-Central), Port Harcourt (South-South and South-East), Kano (North-West), Maiduguri and Yola (North-East) and Lagos (South-West) to facilitate the delivery of electoral logistics” he said.
Similarly, the Management of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has also countered these claims by INEC, stressing that there was no interference in the provision of air traffic services on Saturday, the 16th of February 2019 in line with the agency’s mandate to provide uninterrupted safe, effective, efficient, and economic air navigation services in the country.
