Deep Sea Port: Do the needful to prevent future menace-NPA

The Managing Director (MD) of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman has stated its intervention is to make sure that the Deep Sea port does not portend a menace to Lagos in future.

The MD also explained what transpired in the award of contract to a company alleged to be convicted by government.

She said these on Friday during a press briefing with journalists at the headquarters of the agency in Lagos.

Usman who said she was surprised that there was no provision for rail connection to the project site by the proponents when she came into office two years ago, added that immediately she came in as the helmsman of NPA, the agency wrote to the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to ensure rail connection to the site.

She maintained that Dangote Refinery has also been written to make provisions for pipeline evacuation mechanism to avoid trucks parking on the roads while trying to pick products at the axis.

She said, “Before we took over two years ago, there was no provision for rail connection out of Lekki, in the Deep Sea port plan, which I found quite strange that you can have a deep sea port without the need for rail connection.

“It will take you two years to build the port but five years to build the rail. So, we have written the Nigerian Railway Corporation to ensure that there is a rail connection.

“The same way we have written the Dangote Refinery to have pipeline evacuation mechanism out of Lekki, so that you don’t have trucks parking and looking for where to pick products from the refinery. There is also a proposed Lekki By-Pass in addition to the rail connectivity.

“So, one, there must be pipeline for product evacuation; two, there must be rail connection, three, there must be additional means of road transportation and access. So, we need to work to have some sanity in five years’ time. If we do not deploy what is required now, in five to ten years’ time, Lekki will be unmanageable. I am a believer of starting something, even if you do not finish it, start it.”

The project which is being primed to be one of the largest deep water ports in the sub-Sahara Africa, the promoters are targeting about 1.5 million 20ft equivalent units container capacity annually, which is expected to grow to about 2.7million and 4.7million TEUs, when the operations commence.

On the allegation of awarding a contract to a convicted company, she insisted that the process for the Escravos dredging in Warri port was properly monitored and observed to be flawless by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).

She said, “You will recall that last year, a Swiss court convicted one of our partners of making payments to certain individuals to facilitate invoice payments at the NPA.

“Upon receipt of the Swiss court conviction document, we forwarded same to the EFCC for further investigations, and also submitted copies to the office of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF).

“A year later, a subsidiary of that company convicted by the Swiss court now bidding for work at the NPA. We then received a petition that the company has been convicted, and we sent the bidding firm a letter on the issue. They sent us a sworn affidavit, claiming that they are not the company that was convicted.

“When we proceeded with the Tender process, the BPP now asked us to do an independent investigation of the sworn affidavit that was submitted to us by the alleged convicted company.

“From our independent investigation, we found out that even though the bidding company is a subsidiary of the company that was convicted by the Swiss court, each company has different legal personalities and different profiles.

“Again, findings revealed that Directors of each subsidiary company are not the same and that two Directors of the convicted company have also been convicted. And that the two Directors indicted by the Swiss court are not Directors in the subsidiary that is bidding for work with us.

“These were observations that were made before we continued with the tender process for the Warri port dredging.

“We should all not forget that the company making all these allegations against the company that won the Warri port dredging is the same company that we cancelled their contract at Calabar ports.

“We recall that we cancelled the Calabar contract over findings that work claimed to have been done were not done.

“This company is currently being asked to refund $12m Dollars paid to them, back to the Federal Government, and the case is in court.

“In an ideal world, this company should not have even been allowed to bid for the Warri project or any other project because just last year, its contract for the Calabar port was cancelled over claims of having documents on works done when in actual fact, nothing was done.

“There were also allegations of arithmetic computation that led to the emergence of the Warri port contractor. In financial bid openings, the avenue is provided for computation of numbers to ensure that what was submitted is in line with the bid submitted. That was what was done. The process was verified by the BPP, and we were given the go-ahead to proceed with,” she explained.