NPA to commence recruitment as succession plan – Usman

The Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Usman, says the authority will commence the recruitment of younger professionals into the service in view of the ageing workforce.

Usman disclosed this at a news conference to round off her ongoing tour of Calabar port, which ended on Friday.
According to her, there is a lot of skills and knowledge that need to be transferred and we should be able to transfer knowledge and skills.

Usman said that the authority would embark on recruitment drive and look at the organisational structure to determine how the recruitment would be carried out.

She said that the management was looking at succession planning and recruitment of people.

“We met an arrangement on ground concerning the decision to recruit as the present workforce is ageing.

“We want to recruit specialists, mariners, critical operational staff. These are those positions that we will be targeting.

“We encourage every member of the public to be on the look-out for the advertisement of vacancies and to apply,’’ the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quotes Usman as saying.

She said that the 10-year old port concession exercise is due for a review holistically, adding that the review will broadly examine all facets of the terms of port
concession engagement.

The managing director said the review would cover areas like financing models and the concession environment.

According to her, 10 years after, we have to revisit the concession exercise because we believe it is time to do that.

She said: “We would reach out to the ICRC and they would be part of the review.’’

Usman said that as the nation’s economic climate changes, there was need to adjust.

She also said that many agencies including the NNPC were indebted to the NPA to the tune of huge monies, adding that the management will proceed aggressively to recover the debts.

On the need to dredge the Calabar port, she said that the management held a meeting on Thursday with the Calabar Channel management, adding that NPA has requested for the hydrographic survey done by the company in the past.

Usman said: “There is critical need to resolve the issue to make the draught deeper.’’

In protecting the revenue of the organisation, the managing director assured that the management would look at whatever financing models were put in place and would not accept anybody short changing the Federal Government.

According to her, there are areas of revenue leakages and NPA had put in place e-payment system to prevent data manipulation as the authority moved toward the Single Window Regime.

She solicited the support of the staff as the management would bring policy decisions that might be tough.

Usman said that all operators were aware that we would only accept dollar-denominated payments.

On projects, she promised to ensure that capital projects have impact on the authority’s revenue drive.

She said that the management had spoken with the Cross River Government to partner and open up the Calabar port.

The managing director described the port as the closest to the North East and “is important for us to revive that route so that the mineral deposits in the North would be exported abroad through the port’’.

Usman mentioned that the authority had a 25-year port master plan that would take into consideration all that the Nigerian ports need.

“We believe that the capacity of the ports might not be fully utilised now. This is critical to us as we seek for port development across the country,’’ Usman said.