FG Suspends, Investigates $56 Million Calabar Channel Dredging Contract

The Federal Government may have suspended activities of the Calabar Channel Management Company, even as it has commenced a thorough investigation into the activities of the company in connection with controversies surrounding the contracts the controversial dredging of the Calabar port channel. 
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.
Our correspondent learnt that the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi had in 2016 directed the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA;  Ms Hadiza Bala Usman 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.
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.
Speaking with some journalists last week 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” 
Hadiza also said “A committee was constituted internally to review requests from the minister of transportation, the minister requested that we review the works that had been done in the dredging of Calabar channel, and the committee has completed its work and ready to forward it to the minister”
“One of the important thing to communicate is that for every type of work that is said to be done, we would do a verification, as we look to see the level of siltation in the channel, we look to see the quantum of capital and maintenance dredging that was done within the channel, we have to have verifiable evidence of that dredging work”
“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.