Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has on Monday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State said the authority has discovered that all the quay walls in Rivers Port are weak, and presently at the point of collapse.
According to her, the NPA recently instituted a conditional survey of the port, and a report was sent to the NPA, revealing the fact that the port has reached the end of its lifespan.
Speaking at the combined second and third quarters stakeholders meeting held in Port Harcourt and Onne Ports, Usman said the NPA is making a presentation to the Federal Ministry of Transportation and its board to institute a full rehabilitation and reconstruction of the port in totality.
Usman, who spoke in response to the decommissioning of BUA terminal, said the NPA has been served a contempt of court while arriving Port Harcout today.
She said that in November 2016, a notice of termination was issued to BUA Terminal for none compliance with the port development plan.
This, according to her, was because as part of the concession agreement, there were certain development that each terminal operator is supposed to do.
“BUA was required to rehabilitate and reconstruct that particular terminal but it did not do that for years. NPA did an inspection to determine that, and at the end BUA concession was terminated for failure to adhere to that development plan,” she said.
She said BUA instituted an injection that prevented NPA from interfering with the its concession for one and half years.
“We got the injection in January 2018. So, between January 2018 to June 2019, BUA enjoyed using that terminal in totality with that collapsed quay walls, ” she said.
She further said NPA recently received a letter from the same BUA drawing the authority’s attention to the fact that the condition of the quay wall in that terminal is not safe, and it’s at the point of collapse.
“As a responsible regulator, we looked at the state of that quay wall, having used it for one and half years in that state. We now decommissioned the concession based on health and safety reasons,” she said.
She further said that the same BUA has gone to court to restrain NPA from implementing the decommissioning that was instituted based on safety concern.
“We were not planning to embark on contempt of court until BUA wrote us that it is now issue of safety. So, I am curious to what contempt of court this is about?” She questioned.
Usman however noted that BUA is presently drawing attention of the public and alleging unfair treatment, even as she said it was important to NPA that BUA notifies the stakeholders and the court that they wrote to NPA in that regards.
“They should stop attributing the decommissioning to termination issue because the rule of port business is safety first. Do we ignore safety issues and allow BUA to continue using a terminal that is about to collapse?,” she further questioned.
Usman, who assured that NPA is open to out of court settlement as well as any form of dialogue, also pointed out the need for all parties to give the public the correct perspective of the issue as NPA would resist any form of intimidation and blackmail.
Earlier in his presentation, Yunusa Ibrahim, port manager of Rivers Port said business activities have picked as the port recorded a total of162 vessels with 2, 616,728 gross registered tonnage and cargo throughput of 1,659,722 in the first half of this year.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
