The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has identified political interference and selfish considerations as one of the impediment to revenue drive at the Eastern ports.
The Eastern port of NPA comprises of Delta, Onne, Port Harcourt and Calabar ports.
Delivering a paper on 'Growing NPA's revenue: The case of Eastern Ports, Prospects and Challenges' at a seminar organised by the Maritime Reporters' Association of Nigeria (MARAN) tagged 'Making Nigerian Ports As The Preferred Destination In West And Central African Sub-Region', the Managing Director of NPA, Ms Hadiza Bala Usman also identified shallow depth of the long river channel, youth restiveness and bureaucratic red tape as another challenge to the authority revenue drive.
Ms Usman who was represented by the Assistant General Manager, Strategic and corporate Planning; Mr Innocent Umar said the only way to grow NPA revenue at the Eastern ports is to dredge the channel to allow deep drafted vessels to come in.
"Monitoring of the terminals and jetties towards tracking the tonnage handled so as to a maximise revenue accruable from the throughput. This is especially important for the jetties as bulk of the cargoes operations takes place at the jetties for handling of liquid bulk.
"Virile port promotions to increase port patronage, this effort would increase tonnage handled by the concessionaire and automatically our throughput."
Usman also stated the effort the management of the Authority is doing to increase trade facilitation and grow revenue.
"Development of functional website uploaded with requisite trade information that is hyperlinked with terminal operators’ website displaying profiles.
Meanwhile, , terminal operators operating at the nation's seaports have identified shallow channel, decaying ports infrastructure and port cost occasioned by high incident of corruption as reasons militating against the desire to be preferred destination in West and African sub-region.
The Executive Vice-chairman of Sifax Group, Dr Taiwo Afolabi said for Nigerian ports to grow to become a hub it must deploy ICT to reduce human contact.
Afolabi who was represented by the Genral Manager, Sifax Haulage, Major Henry Ajetunmobi (rtd) said there is an urgent need for the country to widen all mode of cargo evaluation from the port.
He said, "For Nigeria to be a preferred destination in West and African sub-region, there is need for government to sustain progress recorded in the development of deep seaport in Nigeria.
"There is need to improve the cargo handling equipment in our terminal. We must institute port tariff regime that is customer friendly and competitive."
Afolabi also decried high level of piracy and sea robbery on Nigerian territorial water and multiplicity of government agencies at the ports.
He also charged government to address insecurity at various border stations for stakeholders to do business with the country.
"High incident of corruption has led to port cost which has also led to the closure of companies in the country”.
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