Fate works in mysterious ways. That much was demonstrated in President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-appointment of the erstwhile Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mallam Habib Abdullahi, penultimate Thursday. His reinstatement as the NPA boss has more or less turned the seat into a musical chair between him and the immediate past managing director of the all important agency, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Ado Bayero.
Abdullahi had been relieved of his seat by former President Goodluck Jonathan towards the end of his tenure for reasons observers believed had to do with punishing him for insisting on principles that ran contrary to the reckless spending embarked upon by the Jonathan administration in the build up to the 2015 presidential election. While the ex-president was said to have seen the NPA as one of the juicy agencies of government that would supply the funds for his re-election bid, Abdullahi was said to have refused to the key to the agency’s treasury to Jonathan’s presidential campaign team like his counterparts in other ministries and parastatals were doing.
His principled stance not to subject NPA’s funds to the whims and caprices of pro-Jonathan campaigners was said to have drawn the ire of the ex-president and his supporters, who promptly tagged Abdullahi an APC (All Progressives Congress) supporter and urged Jonathan to move against him. Jonathan himself found the proposal to remove Abdullahi as NPA managing director all the more appealing because he found in it an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Bayero had contested the stool of the Emir of Kano with the incumbent emir, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, whose candidacy Jonathan had opposed for obvious reasons. A face-off between Sanusi and Jonathan over the latter’s revelations on the state of the economy had drawn Jonathan to high dudgeon and culminated in the removal of Sanusi as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The effort to humiliate Sanusi would become a huge embarrassment for Jonathan if he became the emir of Kano; a position Sanusi himself had repeatedly said he cherished more than any other in the world. Jonathan thought it expedient to raise an adversary against Sanusi in the jostle for the Emir of Kano’s stool and found one in Bayero. It turned out, however, that the kingmakers in Kano preferred Lamido to Bayero, and there was absolutely nothing the President could do about it because chieftaincy matters are handled purely at state level. Bayero lost out in the contest and Jonathan felt the best way to compensate him was to appoint him as the managing director of NPA in place of the intransigent Abdullahi.
While President Buhari gave no reason for removing Bayero or appointing Abdullahi in his place, event watchers say it is a case of a Daniel coming to judgment. Sources at the Federal Ministry of Transport say that one of the reasons Jonathan booted out Abdullahi was the latter’s reluctance to support a certain N7 billion shore erosion control contract awarded by the administration through the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) at Akipelai, Ayakoro and Otuoke towns in Bayelsa state. It is said that while the job was not executed, there was pressure from official quarters that the contract’s sum be released to the contractor, but Abdullahi resisted.
A ministry official commended President Buhari for reinstating Abdullahi, saying that his reinstatement will shed light on the controversial multi-billion naira contract. The official also alleged that Abdullahi was removed because he refused to release funds for the re-election bid of the erstwhile President, like other heads of the maritime agencies did.
Abdullahi , it was gathered, had also expressed anger with the slow speed of the contractor that won the contract for the rehabilitation of NPA’s six-storey headquarters building in Marina, Lagos. The rehabilitation contract, the ministry official said, “was awarded in 2010 to Messrs Sageto Nigeria Limited for N5.billion.” The consultancy job, The Nation gathered, had earlier been awarded to AIMS Consultants Limited for an undisclosed sum. The contract was supposed to have been completed within 18 months, but more than three years after, the project had not been completed.
Abdullahi, the official said, did a lot in the actualisation of capital projects of NPA, amongst which were:
completion of the construction of a 1.6km road at Lagos Port Complex (LPC)
Completion of reconstruction of terminals B&C at old Warri port
Completion of the rehabilitation of rail track at LPC
Continuation of the rehabilitation of the Tin Can Island Ports (TCIP) quay apron and third party projects, which includes initiation and completion of Island Berth on Lagos Channel by Oando and the completion of Eko Support Services project at Bullnose, Apapa.
Port operators and other stakeholders in the maritime industry also said that Abdullahi had embarked on programmes designed to improve the efficiency of the ports before he was unceremoniously removed.
Speaking with The Nation in Lagos, the President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu, questioned Abdullahi’s removal, saying that the latter had the desire to make the nation’s seaports the leading and the most efficient ports in Africa.
Before his sudden removal by Jonathan, Abdullahi, Shittu said, made sure that NPA was responsible for port planning and development, maintenance of common user facilities, regulation of safety and security of the port environment, ownership of port land and quick payment of government dues by the terminal operators.
This, the ANLCA chief said, was in line with the concession agreement to bring efficiency to the ports and transfer investment costs from the public to the private sector.
“Stakeholders were miffed by the sudden and unfathomable removal of Abdullahi. To most of the operators and stakeholders, he was doing creditably well in terms of performance and was charting a good course for the NPA’s greatness in terms of port operation and global best practices before he was removed. Most of us did not understand why the last government abruptly decided to replace him with somebody who had little or no knowledge of port operation and failed to give any reason for his removal. Many of us felt that the NPA top position had become a cartel for political patronage before Bayero was removed by President Buhari.
“In the area of marine operation, many of us agreed that Abdullahi acted impressively. His efforts were anchored on the need to deliver an efficient port service in a safe, secure and customer-friendly environment in accordance with international practices.
“To achieve this, he paid attention to improving existing port infrastructure such as the rehabilitation of port quay walls and aprons, deepening of the channels, upgrading common user facilities and removal of wrecks from the channels. It was this gesture that made it possible for bigger ships to now call regularly at the nation’s ports.
“For instance, the weekly call of the WAFMAX vessel with a length of 232.33 metres and capacity of 4,500 TEUS requiring draught of 13.5 metres to Lagos and Onne ports was a great achievement that must be given to Abdullahi.”
The channel management and conservancy function of the NPA, Shittu said, also improved under Abdullahi.
“Most of the nation’s sea ports recorded increase in the Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) of vessels mainly due to the capital and maintenance dredging of the channel by the NPA’s Joint Venture (JV) companies like the Lagos Channel Management (LCM) company for the management of the Lagos channel and the Bonny Channel Management (BCC) for the management of the Bonny channel. The profit for the constant dredging of the channels reflected in increasing cargo throughput to 77 million metric tonnes in 2013 from 44,953,073 metric tonnes in 2005 excluding crude oil and gas,” Shittu said.
Other stakeholders said that Abdullahi did a lot in the area of IT development.
An importer, Mr Solomon Adebari said that Mallam Abdullahi led-NPA management scored high in the area of IT as most of its operations mostly in the area of finance are now driven electronically.
“The introduction of IT in its financial operations was a part of his ways of improving NPA’s revenue base without compromising efficiency and comfort of customers. The e-payment initiative by Abdullahi was a very good one.”
The benefits of the e-payment initiative, Adebari said, included:
instant payment confirmation
elimination of human interface in payment procedures
improved turn-around time and
reduction of cost of doing business in the ports which impacts positively on the nation’s economy.
