NPA seeks urgent re-construction of ports access roads

The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mohammed Bello-Koko, has appealed to the House of Representatives Committee on Ports and Harbours to help facilitate the reconstruction of the port access roads for efficient cargo evacuation.

Bello-Koko made the appeal during a three-day oversight visit of the Committee to the NPA headquarters and the ports in Lagos.

The NPA boss, while commending the committee’s visit to the ports and channel assessment to see the challenges and to find solutions, said they have seen the difficulty in terms of access roads to the Tin Can, Apapa and Lekki ports.

He said access roads are of national importance, which the Senate committee has promised to take up, noting that NPA has been working with the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy and in touch with the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, who have sent in their engineers to assess some of these roads.

“What is important is that the costs on these roads should be in the budget and then an emergency should be declared in terms of the reconstruction of the port access roads. No matter how efficient the ports are, if the means of evacuation are not good, it will not be efficient.

“For Lekki port, we have encouraged them to use barges to reduce pressure on the road and they are doing that,” he stated.

On the issue of the 50 per cent deduction from NPA internally generated revenue by the government, Bello-Koko said there should be a review of the policy as the authority is an operational organisation that requires funds to run its corporate responsibilities.

Recall that NPA is a self-funded government agency that receives zero allocation from the government budget.

Bello-Koko said NPA needed to spend money to generate revenue to oversee some expenditures that are tied to revenues, saying: “If we don’t spend that money, there will not be efficiency and revenue will be affected.”

He appreciated the committee chairman’s effort to ensure the country has a more efficient and competitive port environment that will help the ports achieve maritime hubs in West and Central Africa.

On his part, the Chairman of the Committee, Nnolim Nnaji, commended the management and staff of NPA for delivering exceptional results despite impediments outside of its control.

Nnaji commended NPA management for doing well in the area of unprecedented revenue generation and remittance to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) of the federation as well as infrastructure and equipment renewal.

He said the committee has seen the level of decay at the ports and has agreed with the management of NPA on the need to urgently reconstruct Tin Can Island and comprehensively rehabilitate Apapa, Rivers, Warri, Onne and Calabar Port Complexes respectively.

Nnaji also noted the committee’s insistence that the Nigerian Customs Service’s 100 percent physical examination of cargo negates the objectives of trade facilitation and ease of doing business.

He said the committee will give legislative support where necessary for the automation of cargo examination using scanners.

On Lekki deep seaport, Nnaji said the committee got a firsthand experience of the pressing need for the government to ramp up efforts at deploying multi-modalism in the evacuation of cargo from the ports to eliminate the delays associated with over-concentration on the roads.