How Fidelity Bank Facilitated Biggest Car Park in West Africa

For air passengers who travel within Nigeria, car parking space has always been a major challenge, particularly at the airport premises. Aware of this disturbing sight at our airports, leading Nigerian commercial bank, Fidelity Bank took it upon itself to provide, not just a temporary solution to the situation but a permanent and lasting one. The bank therefore, made history on the October 4, 2017, when it unveiled the West Africa’s biggest multi-layer purpose-built car park at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja in Lagos.

The car park project which was executed in partnership with Seymour Aviation Limited and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) was unveiled amidst fun fare, just as the event attracted many stakeholders from the aviation, banking and automobile sectors. Speaking during the commissioning of the outstanding edifice, Deputy Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Mr. Balarabe Mohammed, stated that his company’s involvement in the financing of the project is “in line with our general philosophy that whatever we do, we must touch the lives of people”. .

Balarabe used the occasion to commend FAAN and Seymour Aviation for their commitment and cooperation throughout the multi-billion Naira project. He said the project wouldn’t have been successful if not for the understanding of both organisations demonstrated right from the beginning to the end. In his own comment, Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Engineer Saleh Dunoma, who commissioned the edifice, said the facility was long overdue and also timely as “it will improve passenger facilitation and reduce the menace of indiscriminate parking within and around the airport.” He added that “the project is one of the numerous partnerships FAAN has, and is exploring to improve the infrastructural developments at our airports.”

The CEO who was represented by the executive director of FAAN in charge of Engineering Service, Engr. Salisu Daura, explained that the “event is a testament of a Public Private Partnership with FAAN and Seymour Aviation Limited. According to FAAN, the project is a six level car park facility of 1300 cars parking capacity built on a land measuring 9119.969m2, with 30-year tenure”. The FAAN boss added that the agency has put in place some measures to improve service delivery, even as he appealed to relevant stakeholders to cooperate with FAAN in this regard.

Managing director of Seymour Aviation Limited, Mr. Francis Ikenga said “the multi-level car park was conceived as part of our corporate aim of supporting FAAN’s objectives of making MMA a hub for the West African aviation industry and destination of choice to airport service providers and end users.” According to him, “we consider this project a major mile stone for the country and a national pride to the stakeholders and the citizens as a whole”. Explaining that the facility meets international standard, he listed some of the other features of the ultra-modern car park to include male and female conveniences on every floor, ablution areas, executive waiting lounge, public address systems to be linked with flight arrival/departure information, commercial lifts, bomb detector etc.

Applauding the commitment of the management of FAAN and Fidelity Bank (financiers of the project) in seeing to the completion of the project, he stated that “this event wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of FAAN personnel and financial support of Fidelity bank Plc.” Car parking in the facility costs N500 and N600 per hour respectively for cars and SUVs respectively, while additional parking hour attracts N100 only. It costs N1000 for buses and N200 for additional hour. However, you must be very careful with your parking ticket as loss of ticket attracts a penalty of N5000 plus payment for time used.

PERFORMANCE

Meanwhile, Fidelity Bank has grown profit by 65.1%. This is to hit N16.2 billion in the third quarter. Following its impressive half year audited financial results, the posted another impressive financial performance for the nine months period ended September 30, 2017. Details of the lender’s nine months financial results, released at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recently showed a remarkable growth in key revenue lines and improved efficiency and regulatory ratios.