The Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, says steps are being taken to give the nation’s major ports a facelift before the expiration of the tenure of the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Managing Director of the NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko stated this on Tuesday at the weekly briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team.
He said; “The Tincan and Apapa port keys are actually collapsing but Tincan is one of the oldest ports. We have done a conditional survey and interim drawings and designs and one of the mandates given to us by the Minister of transportation is to ensure that we conclude all the necessary documentation and reviews so that he goes to get the approval of the Federal Executive Council and presidential approval for us to commence the immediate reconstruction of Tincan.
“However don’t forget that there are terminal operators that are operating in that location so, there are multiple options for us. The first one is for the terminal operators to rehabilitate the keys and recoup their money but not all the terminal operators have the same financial muscle to do it.
“The other option is for the government to fund it and of course, the government does not have the kind of money needed. The initial estimate shows it is going to cost slightly above $400 million to reconstruct Tincan so the other option is hybrid where NPA will borrow the money from a multilateral funding agency and then use our revenue and pay for that facility over 10 years and that is being looked at.”
The Managing Director further disclosed that other ports across the country are also being considered for repairs or reconstruction.
Bala-Koko said the NPA has already established 10 export processing terminals in collaboration with the Nigeria Export Processing Council, to enhance the smooth processing of goods meant for transfer to other parts of the world.
He said; “The documentation that exporters have to fill is very cumbersome and I know that the Nigerian Ports Authority, the Nigerian Customs and other government agencies are working together to deploy the national single window and other platforms that will make it easy and reduce the quantum of documents that you need to fill when you are exporting or importing.
“One of the mandates given to us recently is to collaborate with some of these agencies and ensure that we streamline this documentation and ensure that exports get out of the country as quickly as possible and that is why we also created the export processing terminals.
“Every export processing terminal is supposed to have a customs export desk, the Standard Organisation of Nigeria and all the agencies that test or certify every export are supposed to have presence at all the export processing terminals and that means all the cargo will get to the container sealed and ready to go,” he explained.
Bala-Koko added that there is also a strong collaboration with the Nigeria Railway Corporation to ease the movement of cargo across the country.
“The evacuation of cargo using the rail has already commenced about a year ago but I know that the Nigeria Railway Corporation needs more stock in terms of what they need to carry. Already the operation has started but I know that recently the Minister of Transportation had talked about the need for the NRC and NPA to sit down and work with other dry ports that are in the hinterland towards ensuring that when their cargos come into the ports the trains are used to evacuate the cargo and I can assure you that that has already commenced,” he said.
Bala-Koko also said that several vessels engaged in crude oil theft on the nation’s deep waterways usually put off their Automatic Identification System, AIS, to avoid being tracked by maritime officials, with the country losing billions of dollars in revenue.
He said; ”plans have already reached an advanced stage to deploy the Vehicle Tracking System to check the movement of vessels and fraudulent acts.”
“The intelligence persons bringing in vessels to steal crude, one of the things they do is, they shut down the AIS. This is what is needed in terms of transmission for you to even know, when the vessel comes in and the location they go to.
“They come in legally but then they go by the left hand side to commit illegal activities after switching off their AIS. We are going ahead to deploy the Vehicle Tracking System (VTS) and to also have information in terms of vessel movement,” the Managing Director said.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
