Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Malam Abdul Salam Mohammed has raised alarm that the organisation would be crippled if it is forced to remit all its internally generated revenue to the Federation Account.
Statutorily, NPA is expected to keep any excess of its revenue, but some interests have been canvassing that the agency should not be allowed to keep any fraction.
But the managing director told members of the House of Representatives committee on marine transport that it would not be in the best interest of the nation’s port system for revenue that would be needed to keep the system running to be taken away form the organisation.
According to him, apart form the need to run the system, the revised Port Act of 1999, grants NPA the right to keep excess of its internally generated revenue and use same for the provision of its infrastructural and project needs.
Part iv, section 15 under the Financial Provision of the Port Act of 1999 provides that “any excess of the Authority’s revenue for any year over its outgoings and charges for that year shall be applied for such purposes as the Authority may determine but no part of the excess shall be applied otherwise than for the purposes of the Authority”.
According to the Managing Director to transfer all its excess or surplus to the Federation Account, as it is being canvassed in some quarters, was to cripple the NPA as a growing business cornern, adding that the country should borrow a leaf from the operations of other Port Authorities in the world on how they manage their surplus.
“I feel that if we adopt that position we will end up crippling the NPA as a growing concern because it was by the grace of the parliament that the Act establishing the NPA, gave the Authority the privilege of utilising any surplus arising from its income in relation to its expenditure to undertake further project relating to its operations” he said.
Making reference to the US$20 Million which NPA remitted to the Federation Account last year and the dismay that was earlier expressed by committee chairman, Hon Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and some members over the inability of NPA to remit all its revenue to the federation account, Abdul Salam, argued that: “I know the sum may look so inconsequential, if you relate it to the surplus. But if you relate it to the huge commitment in terms of infrastructural requirements that we have for the year 2009 and if you also relate it to the commitment of the management in the past to fulfil that responsibility, we will appreciate that an appreciable progress has been made because for a long period the Management of NPA has not been alive to this responsibility”.
Explaining further, the Managing Director said “the position of the current management on the matter was that “we will like to see the transformation of the NPA to an organisation with necessary working infrastructure and in that way, make more revenue and contribute more into the government coffers”.
He argued that “just like in a private company, if you make a profit, the owners of that company do not expect you to fully transfer whatever surplus you have to the shareholders. If you do that, such a company is not likely to be a viable one”.
“In our taking a position on this matter, I will like us to borrow from the operations of port authorities worldwide. Port Authorities worldwide, either owned by national governments or municipal authorities are treated as business concerns with responsibilities in terms of obligation to the owners, but with also an obligation to perform essential and important economic and strategic responsibilities. So the law always creates a system that would make the Ports Authorities a viable business concern” he added.
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