country’s airspace by committing N36 billion for the overhaul of the country’s air traffic management system, including the Safe Tower Project .
Speaking in an interactive session with members of the League of Aviation and Airport Correspondents , the acting managing director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency , Mathew Pwajok, said, included in the STP is the upgrade of the air traffic management system, surveillance system, meteorological system in the four major airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano.
Giving a breakdown, he said, the federal government had approved N13 billion for the STP and N23.2 billion for the upgrade of the soft and hardware of the Total Radar Coverage . According to him, aside from that, the upgrade would also occur to nine Monopulse Secondary Surveillance Radars to cover Lagos, Kano, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ilorin, Maiduguri, Talata-Mafara, Numan, and Obubra, saying, it will improve the country airspace surveillance.
He said: “the agency is at the completion stage of its pet project, the Wide Area Multi-lateration system, which is a surveillance system to cover Nigeria’s delta region and whose cost was put at $12.9 million. Oil and gas activities are occasioned by a lot of helicopter operations in the Niger Delta and the purpose of WAM is to capture these flight operations that are outside the radar coverage areas in the country.“This is done for safety and security purposes.