Were it not for the red flag raised by the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authourity (NPA), Hadiza Bala-Usman the Federal Government would not have terminated the controversial dredging of Calabar channel.
Shipping Position Daily confirmed last week that, upon assuming office as the NPA boss, she pored through the Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited/ NPA contract and the emergence of Calabar Channel Management as the vehicle company and discovered that there is a great deal of sharp practices.
Our correspondent confirmed that in 2014, Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited and NPA went into contract to dredge the approach to Calabar port at the cost of $12.5Billion. The company is said to be owned by Senator Hope Uzodinma.
The channel dredging contract was eventually given to a third party vehicle company; the Calabar Channel Management (CCM).
Sources confirmed to Shipping Position Daily that, not only was the contract won without competitive bidding, the job was also not carried out.
“When she discovered that there was fraud in the execution of the contract, she ordered that further payments should be stopped. She had written to the Minister on April 19, 2017 to approve that payments should be stopped”
“It is also true that she invited the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) when she discovered that the dredging contract was not carried out”
“It is true that there were protests from the contractor; they wrote to the Minister of Transport kicking against the stoppage, but madam (NPA MD) also wrote to the Minister detailing the various underhand dealings in the contract”, our source confirmed.
Our source also made copies of the NPA MD’s memos to the Minister available, in which she detailed how Messrs Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited not only refused to carry out any dredging, but how the contract did not meet procedures.
In one of the memos, the NPA MD told the Minister that, “all efforts to find details of dredging activities for the period during which CCM claimed to have dredged Calabar Access Channel (November 2014 to January 2015) proved abortive”.
She added that, “the Harbour Master and Port Hydrographer during the period stated they were unaware of any dredging undertaken by CCM during the period. Further, there was no communication between the company and the Port Management on their purported dredging activities during the period.”
Shipping Position Daily recalls that contract for the dredging of the Calabar port channel was first awarded at the initial cost of N3 billion in 1996, but it was later re-awarded in 2006 at $56 million. The Federal Government awarded yet another contract in November 2014 at N20 billion to complete the project. It remains uncompleted till date.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the contract for 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.
Our correspondent learnt that the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi had in 2016 directed the Managing Director of NPA to carry out a review of the works that had been done on the dredging of Calabar channel and to ascertain if the contract was actually carried out.
Speaking with some journalists recently at the NPA headquarters, Hadiza confirmed that government is no longer making use of the Calabar Channel Management Company in carrying out dredging of the channel. She equally confirmed that government is also probing the emergence of the Calabar Channel Management as a company, to ensure that due diligence was followed and to ensure that there was competition and transparency in the setting up of the joint venture company. She said that the report demanded by the transport minister is ready and that it would soon be made public after it must have been submitted to the minister.
Speaking on the way forward, she said that: “One of the important things is that we would look to seeing how we would dredge Calabar channel, dredging of Calabar channel would no longer be tied to the joint venture company (CCM), I have made that very clear, we would put a budgetary provision for the dredging of Calabar channel, we have concerns on the verifiable evidence of dredging works that is said to have been done by the joint venture company”.
“We are also looking at the emergence of the Calabar Channel Management as a company to ensure that due diligence was followed in the emergence of the company to ensure that there was competition and transparency in the setting up of the joint venture company, we have looked at all of those issues and we are submitting the report to the minister for his consideration”, she said.
“As a whole, on our dredging projects across the respective zones, we have noted the concerns on the quantum of dredging that we are seeing and the amount of capital and maintenance dredging and the basis of which dredging is done” “Based on these, we have instituted a dredging optimization study that would determine the quantum of dredging works that would be done, everything would be guided by empirical data, we should take decisions based on data and not based on assumption”
“So in 2017, we would conclude the dredging optimization study which would now form the basis on which all our dredging plans are carried out”, she confirmed.
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