Officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited on Saturday engaged in fisticuffs over the placement of advert billboards within the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.
SUNDAY PUNCH learnt that the brawl led to traffic jam around the airport as motorists were stopped by the officials during the fracas.
FAAN alleged that thugs and hoodlums hired by BASL, operators of the domestic terminal 2, forcefully replaced the advertisement flex removed by the authority recently.
FAAN, according to its spokesperson, Mr. Yakubu Dati, said the advert displays constituted a breach of the concession agreement between the two organisations.
He said, "The activities of the hoodlums resulted in unnecessary traffic bottleneck on the airport access road before FAAN security officials dispersed them and restored order in the affected part of airport and removed the advertisement flex."
FAAN recently removed the adverts on the grounds that they were illegally placed along the internal road of the airport.
It said the advert materials infringed on advertisement rights of the authority, since those who placed the adverts did not receive the permission of FAAN to do so.
Dati said, "Dismantling of those advert materials was part of a nationwide exercise being carried out by FAAN to halt illegal advertisement on airport land. So, the authority views the recent replacement of the dismantled advert material along the airport internal road by Bi-Courtney today (Saturday), as an act of provocation which must be resisted, in the overall interest of safety and security at the airport."
In a swift reaction, BASL, in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Steve Omolale-Ajulo, stated that FAAN's officials with about 60 hired thugs invaded the premises of MMA2, where they assaulted the workers, damaged a video camera and seized mobile phones of the workers.
He said, "They swooped on the billboard barely 15 minutes after it was reinstalled and vandalised it before taking it away in a van.
"They had earlier vandalised the same advert billboards on the hotel project and another on the pedestrian bridge on June 6, despite a subsisting court order by Justice Stephen Adah of the Federal High Court, Ikeja Division, given on November 15, 2011."
Omolale-Ajulo said the FAAN officials besieged the site of the hotel project in several vans, buses and a fire truck and pulled down the billboards, causing heavy traffic jam on airport road.
The Punch