Airport Will Temporarily Shut, Disrupting a Nigerian Lifeline<br />Kaduna said that You close the airport for six weeks, it’s unheard-of.<br />Emmanuel Onyekwena said that Everybody is worried in Nigeria,<br />They have said repairs should take no more than six weeks,<br />but skeptical passengers accustomed to unfulfilled government promises worry that work could drag on for months.<br />Not all of our staff can go there," said Aliyu Oladimeji, a manager whose baggage-handling<br />company still hadn’t decided how it would sort out employee salaries during the shutdown.<br />The people who make decisions are here." The Abuja airport opened in 1982,<br />and it hasn’t had a thorough resurfacing since then, said Henrietta Yakubu, acting general manager of the corporate affairs for the Department for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.<br />Some international airlines have decided to reject the government’s plan to fly to Kaduna<br />and instead are rerouting flights to Lagos until the Abuja airport is operational.<br />The closing will also upend the lives of children who sell bags of six or seven peanuts in the shell, of men who push luggage carts for a fee, of people who hawk manila folders stuffed with a type of spicy beef jerky, of money changers<br />and phone credit sellers — all of whom rely on travelers to manage their precarious financial situations.
