It is 18R now, since the magnetic bearing is 183°. Last I heard was they were putting the lighting in. Why it would take so long, according to my local knowledge, would be that the contractor hasn't been paid! That is just an educated guess, of course.
I think you'll find, in a lot of cases, it is very much that 'one should never argue with a fool' when some stupid article is printed.
Remember the ADC crash, when some local preacher was quoted as having seen the ill-fated 727 'hovering' around Murtala Muhammed Airport for a while? Who knows where they get the stuff they print.
The local Nigerian press is often a bit of a joke anyway, when you can read stuff such as, 'The victim is recovering from his mortal wounds in hospital.' And, as here, there was just a big, smoking hole to be seen, with survivors reported. By whom?
Jerry Agbeyegbe was the last guy to make trenchant and often well-informed criticisms of what was going on in Nigerian commercial aviation and look what happened to him!
When you have all these ratty little two-airplane 'airlines' without even proper maintenance facilities, kept up with invisible strings, hold up your hands everyone who thinks the regulators are serious. Anyone?
Even Virgin Nigeria, after much big-big grammar, is offering joke wages to local pilots. $2 500 US equivalent per month is what several guys have told me. So what is that about? Perhaps some little scam to keep on sub-contracting ex-pats for handsome fees? They sure aren't going to attract many quality guys on those terms, are they?
The sad thing is what all of this does to the image of Nigeria, when everyone is tarred with the same brush. Come to that, I heard from a friend who passed along my details that the guy just laughed when he heard I was looking for another job after more than 20 years in Lagos. Jeez! And I was expecting an offer by return of post!