Nigerian ports ready for excess volume from ban on vehicle importation through border, says NPA boss
Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) in a recent interactive session with select journalists to mark her 100 days in office, said that the Roll-on, Roll-off terminals in the nation’s seaports have the capacity, and have also positioned to handle the addition volume from the ban on importation of vehicles through land borders. She spoke on other things the authority is doing to move the port to the next level. UZOAMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE was there.
Port capacity to handle more volume
Our seaports are ready to take the additional traffic the new policy on vehicle importation might bring. With the ban on importation of cars through land borders, we are likely going to see increase in activities at the port and we are putting mechanism in place to handle the traffic and offer seamless operations. We always had that capacity, which is currently under-utilised. And now that we hope to have increased activities, we will up what we have on ground.
Development of deep seaports
NPA’s 20 percent stake in the development of Lekki deep seaport is ‘too high,’ and we currently working to pay lower shareholding than the 20 percent that was envisaged at the beginning of the project. NPA, on behalf of the Federal Government has paid 4.4 percent of its shareholding but the concern we have, is if we have the priority to invest a tune of over $100 million in port development.
The NPA’s shareholding is a comfort shareholding that enables the investor to feel the presence of government for the sustainability of the project. The 20 percent might be too high considering the current state of Nigeria financially, and the fact that the country has other areas that required priority spending of resources.
We are discussing with the Federal Ministry of Transport to scale down our shareholding below the 20 percent that is currently provided in the structure as approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC). We believe strongly that this will not affect any financial model that the promoter of the Lekki port is working on.
ISPS Code implementation
The United State Coast Guard has scheduled to carry out an assessment of the Nigerian seaports and facilities in February 2017. They are also expected to grade Nigeria’s seaport terminals and facilities. The NPA is on top of the situation to ensure 100 percent compliance and we have communicated to terminal operators, who are very much compliant to the provisions of the Code. NPA is very much aware of its obligations as regards the ISPS Code and we have been leading in compliance to the provisions of the Code.
Debt recovering plans
The authority will aggressively pursue all the funds trapped in banks to ensure that such funds are remitted into the federation accounts. We will ensure that all the debt owed NPA by terminal operators and other lessors, is recovered and remitted into the Single Treasury Accounts (TSA) in a shortest possible time.
Heritage bank and Aso Homes are still having some certain amount of NPA monies in their possession without being remitted into the Federation Account. We still have our N400 million in Aso Homes in the same manner that we still have indebtedness in Heritage bank. Heritage bank has paid some certain amount of money but we still have about $19 million that belongs to NPA, which has not been returned to the TSA.
NPA has a huge debt profile that runs into N10 billion and another $585 million debt that we considered as bad debt. All we need is to go through the legal process of considering them as bad debt before taking them out of our books.
NPA is working on removing the debt that was accrued by a lessor that was unable to have access to a piece of land contained in the lease agreement due to an encroachment. This is because the fundamental to lease is that the lessor has to have access to the property and we believe that it would be very irresponsible to force a particular entity to pay for a lease that was encumbered by encroachment; topography or others.
We will develop a framework for debt recovering because we have loss quite a significant sum. We also have indebtedness where entities owe NPA but at a point such entity will pack up and will not be found within the address given to NPA.
Port access roads
NPA has concluded talks with Dangote and Floor Mills of Nigeria on bringing permanent solution to the issue of bad state of Apapa/Wharf road. The final drawing of the Apapa/Wharf road will be submitted to the Federal Ministry of Works in few weeks. We have identified the need for building drainage on the road. We are also considering using the same framework that was used in the building of the Obajena road but, the Federal Ministry of Works will communicate the details of the construction with the public when they are done.
NPA has finally gotten the rehabilitation of Creek road and two other roads in Apapa into 2017 budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. The minister has confirmed that the budget will address the listed roads and construction would be carried out next year.
We have identified the need to have functional holding bays and trailer garages. The minister of Power, Works and Housing has also confirmed that the completion of the trailer park being built at the Second Gate area of the Tin-Can Island Port would be contained in 2017 budget. In addition, we are working to ensure the reduction in the number of trailers that are running on Apapa roads, because we have understood that some of these trailers are not on their way to anywhere.
Some of the things that we are putting in place are to create a model where trailers would be allowed in Apapa if certified that such trailer is actually going to pick up cargo. There is also this World Bank initiative that was brought to NPA to put up an electronic monitoring system for trucks coming to Apapa. This is indeed going to be a whole private sector driven initiative.