Abuja: Nigeria will close the capital city of Abuja's airport at the end of Wednesday for a scheduled six weeks of runway repairs, an aviation ministry spokesman said,
The closure is Wednesday rather than Tuesday, said ministry spokesman James Odaudu, after confusion over when the shutdown would start.
After mounting complaints about the poor state of the runway from airlines, and with safety consultants fearing impending disaster, government officials finally acceded to fixing its many cracks and holes — repairs that are 15 years overdue.
Officials decided the damage was so bad that it couldn’t be fixed piecemeal and required a total shutdown of operations. They have said repairs should take no more than six weeks, but skeptical passengers accustomed to unfulfilled government promises worry that work could drag on for months.
