Ekeomah Atuonwu
The international wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, was temporarily shut in the early hours of Thursday after the mangled body of a dead man was found on Runway 18R of the nation’s flagship airport.
The identity of the corpse could not be ascertained as of press time. Also, it could not be established whether the dead man was knocked down by an aircraft taking off or landing on the runway.
However, airport officials told journalists that the runway was temporarily shut down while a team of officials from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and the Nigeria Police Force evacuated the corpse from the runway.
During the temporary shutdown of the runway, international flights were prevented from landing and taking off from the airport’s international terminal.
Also, the Police Public Relations Officer, Airport Command, said he had yet to get the requited signal on the incident.
According to him, the police are still investigating the identity of the dead man and how he got to the security area of the international airport.
However, an aviation security expert and former Military Commandant of the MMIA, Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd.), said there was a need to investigate how the unidentified man found his way into the sensitive area of the airport, describing the incident as a major security breach.