FG Moves to Plug Revenue Leakages, Review Agreements with Port Operators

Ernest Chinwo in Port Harcourt
The federal government has said it was working seriously to resolve the issues of revenue leakages at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to bring it in line with the federal government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy.
Government also said it would review the terms and conditions in the agreements it entered into with operators and service providers at NPA.

The Managing Director of NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman, who stated this yesterday during inspection of facilities and inauguration of a 3.5 MVA, 33/IIKV Injection Substation at Onne Port in Rivers State, said the moves became necessary because government was worried that some operators have been involved in sharp practices.
She also said instituting transparency in the system had been the most challenging issue confronting the current management of the authority.

The NPA boss said: “On this visit, we have seen a lot of challenges and the important one is the issue of electricity in Onne ports. That has been addressed because we have just inaugurated the connection of Onne port to national grade.

“That solves the problem of electricity in Onne port. We believe that this marks the begging of 24 hours power supply at the port. We also will ensure that the payment of indebtedness by the operators, to ensure that our lease agreement for the landed property that NPA leased are done more efficiently.

“It is not acceptable for any terminal operator not to comply with the provisions of the concession agreement. We are working to have all revenues that are meant for the federal government to go into the TSA.

“We have commenced that programme so that all revenues will be remitted to NPA as an entity.  And NPA will review provisions of those payments and will issue invoice and lead on collection of those revenues.

She noted historic provision where a service provider is leading payments made through a service provider that is not acceptable to us to move forward as NPA. This is one of the steps to ensure that revenue leakages are blocked.
“We are looking at every agreement we have entered with service providers. On the issue of African Circle, we are going to look at the deployment of infrastructure. We will want to know if African Circle has done the deployment.”