Nigeria reopened the capital’s airport in Abuja on Tuesday (April 18), officials said, following a six-week closure for runway repairs that disrupted international air traffic to the country.
During the shutdown, authorities diverted flights to Kaduna, a provincial airport 160 km (100 miles) away, where carriers including British Airways, Lufthansa and South African Airways refused to fly on security grounds.
Ethiopian Airlines was the only foreign carrier to use Kaduna airport during the closure. Other international airlines continued to fly into Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos.
Abuja is the political nerve centre of Africa’s most populous nation and a major business hub in the continent’s biggest economy.
