• Reps Say APMT Is Enemy To Nigeria’s Economy
Less than one month after the Ministerial Committee on Port Efficiency turned-in a damaging verdict about its operations, the members of the House of Representatives Committee on Customs and Excise have lampooned port concessionaire, APM Terminal in Lagos for incompetence and sundry cases of insincerity in the handling of the terminal that was concessioned to it in 2006.
The damaging verdict was handed down on the concessionaire last week after the committee completed a fact-finding visit to some of the terminals in Lagos where they were confronted with confirmations of earlier allegations against the terminal operators.
Speaking at the Tin Can Island port after the visitation, chairman of the committee, Honourable Umar Farouk said that most of the terminal operators deceived Nigerian government, even as he singled out APM Terminal. He said the company has no capacity to participate in the concessioning programme nor do they have the passion to actually invest in Nigeria.
He alleged that APM Terminal is “cheating Nigerians with all sort of excessive charges, all in the name of concessioning” and labelled the company as an enemy of the Nigerian economy.
“Earlier this morning, we visited some terminals in Apapa and precisely APM Terminals and it’s a shocking realisation that we have people who presented themselves to us as partners in progress, as people who have come to add value to what we are doing only to find out that they neither have technical capacity to participate in the concessioning programme of our port, nor do they have the passion to actually invest in Nigeria. They are raking in money. In fact we found out that they are also milking Nigerians with all sorts of excessive charges, all in the name of being a concessionaire.
The lawmakers insisted that the prevailing abuses must be corrected, adding that the House of Representatives would look into the agreement. “Definitely, action will be taken. Nigeria is an independent country and we will not allow anybody, no matter how highly connected, here in Nigeria or outside to come and defraud our country and defraud our economy”, Farouk stressed.
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