By Chibuzo Ihegboro
The Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo has promised travellers that touts would be flushed out in and out of Nigeria’s international airports.
According to the Minister, two sets of touts at the International airports are causing the country a huge embarrassment before its visitors.
Keyamo noted that there are touts inside the airports and some others outside, explaining that the former are more dangerous and would require the help of armed security operatives to clear out, while the latter are a national embarrassment as they show no respect for their uniforms.
He revealed this at the Ministerial Press Briefings, Keyamo said, “There are two types of touts at the airports. The official touts and non-official touts. That’s the truth.
“You meet touts outside and inside the airport you meet touts in uniforms, who dip hands into bags, ask for money.
“In many cases, we have seen disgraceful videos on social media. Although this is not under us, it’s just our environment but we’ve spoken to the Interior and the National Security Adviser and we’re working jointly on that.
We may have to present a joint memo very soon to try and reduce the human contact at the airports. All of those agencies should be behind glass doors somewhere.
“They cannot all be seen embarrassing our country. We’re addressing that problem and very soon we’re going to come with a holistic solution.
“For the touts outside, we are asking for back up because FAAN, they don’t carry arms. Some of these boys (touts outside) are armed.
So we are trying to call for help from normal security agencies to see how they can cooperate with us to purge them out of the airports.”