The Nigerian ports Authority (NPA) is profusely bleeding from the laceration and bruises it sustained from the vicious but serial looting of its treasury by its joint ventures partners.
Ironically, the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) initiative which was evolved by the Federal government to fund some of its statutory infrastructural obligations to the masses through Joint Venture arrangement with private business interests has gone awry in the NPA.
In 2005 and in line with this PPP arrangement, the NPA formed two joint venture companies with some business interests to carry out both capital and maintenance dredging of the port channels in Lagos and Eastern ports axis which include the Bonny Channel Company Limited established and incorporated in August, 2005 with 60 per cent equity shareholding by the Nigerian Ports Authority and 40 per cent equity shareholding by the consortium, (TCMC) The Channel Management Company Limited.
The shareholding structure of BCC provides for the appointment of three NPA Directors as members of BCC Board and two Directors from the Joint venture partners.
Also, Lagos Channel Management Company manages the Lagos Pilotage District. It was incorporated in August, 2005 by NPA with an equity shareholding of 60 per cent and 40 per cent equity to the Joint Venture partner, DEPASA MARINE INTERNATIONAL.
The Company’s Board of Directors is made up of three Directors from the Nigerian Ports Authority and two Directors from the Depasa Marine International.
The third JVC and the most controversial was the Calabar Channel Management Company Limited which was established in 2014 between Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited with the Nigerian Ports Authority for Management Contract on Dredging of Calabar Channel.
The Nigerian Ports Authority holds 60 per cent equity share participation while the Consortium led by Messrs Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited holds the balance 40 per cent shareholdings.
Their responsibilities include Plan, Manage, Execute Maintenance and Capital Dredging works along the assigned channels, removal of wrecks along the channel ,maintenance of aids to navigation, management training of NPA officials in line with dredging operations and visual pollution monitoring and bathymetric survey of channel.
However, with the active connivance of past NPA top officials, the three JV companies have allegedly fleeced the agency of an estimated sum of $3billion (N111trillion) since 2005 while the Lagos Channel Management( LCM) and Bonny Channel Management(BCM) were still asking for additional N23 billion and N20 billion respectively in NPA’s 2017 budget, the Calabar Channel Management(CCM) whose contract with the NPA was worth 26billion, was said to had submitted invoices for the fourth quarter 2014 and first quarter 2015, totalling $34.56 million which government paid $12.5 million before further payment was suspended.
The company was still pressuring the NPA for the payment of the balance sum.
Stakeholders have all along questioned the propriety of the huge sum of money being paid to these companies annually without commensurate service delivery.
They observed that since the agreement to deepen the depth of the port’s channels across the country, not much was achieved as most of these channels could still not accommodate bigger vessels that require at least 13 metres draught.
They insisted that apart from Lagos pilotage District which has attained a minimal depth of 12 to 13 metres, other ports in the Eastern and Calabar pilotage District are below 12 metre depth.
Yet, the JV companies have supposedly been carrying out both capital and maintenance dredging on these channels at great cost to the Country.
Nigerian Ports Channels and their depths
Despite the continuous pumping of resources into the dredging of its ports channels through the JV companies, the Nigerian Ports have still not attained the desired load centre status which could have enhanced the revenue profile of the agency and boosted the economic benefits derivable from such status.
Instead, the country has lost the potential preferred destination status to smaller countries in the sub- region such as Ghana, Cote D’ Voire and Togo whose ports have deeper depth than Nigerian ports.
According to the statistics by the Port Hydrographer/ Harbour master of NPA, under the Western ports/Lagos pilotage district, the Lagos ports approaches from fairway buoy to Commodore channel is an average of 14.4m , Commodore pole to Meridian point is 13.5.m.
At Lagos ports Complex, Meridian point to berth 20 is 13.7m, berth 20 to turning basin is 13.0m while at Tin Can Island port, Apapa turning basin to TICP is 12.7m, berth 8 (TICP) to Turning basin(TICP) IS 10.8 metre while Kirikiri Lighter Terminals phase 1&11 is 4.1metre.
Under the Eastern Ports / Bonny pilotage district, at Rivers ports, fairway Bonny to Bonny town is 13.5metres, Bonny town to Onne is 11metres , Onne to Ibeto jetty(PHC) is 8.50metres and Ibeto to Rivers ports is 9.4metrs.
In Onne ports complex, Onne junction to Onne port is 11.3metres while Delta port complex, Warri is 5.4metres,K oko port is 5.2metres while Calabar port, which has the most controversial dredging exercise and has gulped billions of dollars over the years, is still at 6.4metres.
Despite little or no impact this dredging exercise has achieved over the years with all the huge resources being pumped into it, successive NPA managements have kept mum over what stakeholders described as a blatant rape of national treasury by these JV companies.
However, it took the bravery and doggedness of the present management of the NPA led by Ms Hadiza Bala Usman to blow open the serial sleaze going under the JV agreement of NPA.
The Calabar channel dredging which has been a conduit pipe to siphon money from the coffer of the Federal government provided the opportunity for the Bala Usman-led management team to discover the rot in the JV arrangement.
The contract for the dredging of the Calabar port channel was first awarded at the initial cost of N3billion in 1996, but it was later re-awarded in 2006 at $56 million. The Federal Government awarded yet another contract in November 2014 at N26billion to complete the project.
The beneficiary of the latest contract re-awarded in 2014 was Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited which entered into a controversial JV agreement with the NPA to dredge Calabar Channel at the cost of $34.56millon out of which the sum of $12.5millon was paid by previous NPA management.
However, the refusal of the present management to pay the balance as being requested by the contractors due to what NPA described as infraction in the award process and lack of evidence of work done led to the discovery of the illicit deals in the JV process.
Despite the volume of resources expended on the dredging exercise, there was a marginal improvement of the depth of Calabar from 6.0m in 2003 to 6.4m till date.
The contract for the dredging of the Calabar port channel, which was signed by the NPA, the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and the Calabar Channel Management, was for the channel to be dredged up to 9.8 meters.
Both Ukemeabasi Udoh, the Commercial Manager of ECM Terminal and Balogun Moruf Adedayo, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Ecomarine Terminals Limited, who are operators at Calabar port attested to the shallowness of the channel despite the huge amount spent on its dredging.
But Daniel Fuch , the Managing Director of Lagos Channel Management, claimed that his company, despite financial challenges, has deepened the Lagos channel to 13.5m at both Apapa and Tin Can ports which he said can accommodate a bigger vessels of between 260cm and 275cm.
However, the sanction of one of the technical partners in the JVC, Bonny Channel Management officials by Swiss court has also strengthened the suspicion of unwholesomeness in the JV arrangement by the NPA.
Swiss prosecutors had named four former Nigerian government officials in a multinational bribe scandal relating to contract awards at NPA.
The former Nigerian government officials were indicted alongside Dredging International, one of the technical partners that was sentenced to a fine of one million Swiss Francs and directed to refund 36 million Swiss Francs in illegal profits for allegedly making the illicit payments to the Nigerian officials.
Dredging International Services is one of the technical partners of Bonny Channel Management Limited (BCML) that runs the Bonny Channel Company (BCC) with the NPA in a joint-venture – public-private partnership.
Ms Usman, who has since come under attack from the embattled JV partners, has called in the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) probe the whole award process and has also threatened to cancel the whole JV arrangement because of the permeating fraud in the process.
Also, the National Assembly has mandated its Senate Committee on Marine Transport to open a comprehensive probe of the whole JV programme of NPA to unravel how the sum of $3billon was squandered since 2005.