CRISIS ROCKS AFRICAN CIRCLE MARINE POLLUTION MANAGEMENT COMPANY

•    Technical Consultant Relieved Unceremoniously

About eight years after it entered the Nigerian maritime industry as a pollution management firm, African Circle Pollution Management Company has been hit by in-fighting and management crisis, leading to the indefinite suspension of its managing director, Mr Ayodele Emmanuel.
Currently, the management which was headed by Mr Emmanuel has been replaced by a management committee.
Insider sources told Shipping Position Daily while the Managing Director has been on suspension since August last year, the consultant to the project, Captain Suleman Bayee, has also been asked to go.
The firm reportedly is currently stuck as most of the people driving the project have left the firm, a development that may worsen the management of marine waste within Nigeria's waters.
Before the crisis, the firm had concluded plans to commence the construction of marine pollution management plant in the Eastern port, having completed the plant in Lagos, which is currently located at the Snake Island Integrated Free Zone in Nigerdock.
Insider sources told our correspondent that the unhealthy development at African Circle has put paid to the proposed project at Eastern plant as sacked workers and consultants have gone with designs and valuable engineering data that would have helped in the construction of the plant.
Efforts to get the response of one of the key players in the current management committee in the company, Mr Ahmadu Ahmadu were abortive. After ignoring the many calls that were made to him on his telephone lines, he eventually told our correspondent that he would get back, but, he never did.
However in a text message to him on the matter, Ahmadu replied thus: The MD is still Ayodele… I am still the regional manager”.
Similarly, efforts to reach both Ayodele Emmanuel and Captain Suleman Bayee were futile as their phones were switched off throughout last week.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the Nigerian Ports Authourity (NPA) in 2004 awarded contract for the control and management of marine waste in the nation’s ports to African Cycle for a 20-year  period to cover ports in Lagos and the eastern operational flanks of the organisation.