Nigerian airports will buy full-body scanners to boost security after a foiled bombing attempt involving one of its citizens on a Northwest Airlines plane to Detroit.
Airlines passengers will be stopped from boarding flights if they refuse the 3-D scans, Harold Demuren, the Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters in Lagos today. The scanners will be installed at Nigeria’s four international airports next year.
The measures follow steps by the Netherlands, which will start using 15 full-body scanners for all U.S.-bound flights. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, is charged in the U.S. with smuggling explosives onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and trying to blow up the plane as it prepared to land on Christmas Day. Passengers and crew subdued him when he tried to ignite the explosives.
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“We are looking at new traits from terrorists” while the measures will also help counter drug smuggling, Demuren said. “As they come we will catch them.”
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, which is responsible for the running of the country’s airports, took delivery of 14 walk-through metal detectors on Dec. 28 to improve security, Akin Olukunle, a spokesman for the authority, said in a phone interview today.
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