Mohammed Bello-Koko, the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), has threatened to institute legal action against any media house that publishes unsubstantiated and damaging reports about his person.
This is due to the recent actions of some faceless individuals under the cover of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) targeted at defaming and extorting him using blackmail through a section of online media.
According to a statement signed by Bello-Koko, and sent to BusinessDay at the weekend, the CSOs have been blackmailing the NPA boss in the past two years and have resorted to a cruel campaign of calumny against his person and family.
Bello-Koko said that efforts to seek redress in court on the grounds of the CSOs’ rehashed and rehearsed lies failed due to the fact that the people in question are faceless.
Read also: Lekki Port appoints Bello-Koko, CHEC boss as board of directors
“I need to reiterate that for all of my years as a banker and a public officer up till today, I have never been indicted or convicted by any court. And this fact is in the public domain. I’m also certain that my integrity as well as dedication and fidelity to the rules of public administration must have influenced the decision by the Federal Government to promote me from the rank of an executive director of Finance and Administration to the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Ports Authority,” he said.
According to Bello-Koko, the CSOs have gone as far as maliciously writing to the UK Government to seek visa cancellation and forfeiture of assets belonging to him and his wife
“I have yet to understand why these evil machinations would be orchestrated against me. Is the offence that I committed my acceptance and readiness to serve my country to the best of my ability?” he questioned.
He said the latest attack in the series of sponsored blackmails targeted at me began in 2021 immediately after he was elevated from the position of Executive Director of Finance and Administration to the position of Managing Director of the NPA.
“Is there no limit to what vested interests can do in their desperate pursuit of power and influence? In deceit, they have disingenuously claimed in the sponsored report that UK/Ireland Investigators were the ones that had written to the UK government after they had purportedly unearthed alleged criminal acts against me, bordering on money laundering activities, fraud, forgery, and tax evasion, which are all baseless figments of their malicious intent.
“The particulars cited in the report were the regurgitated allegations that they had sponsored, and which had been doing the rounds in the media from the outset, this latest attempt is as spurious as their first attempt ever. Their claim that UK/Ireland Investigators, and not Metropolitan Police or Scotland Yard, are investigating me falls flat on its face and gives out the sponsors of the report- which is a piece of cheap blackmail-as desperate hustlers who are not civil and neither working in the interest of the society,” he said.
He said that it is unfortunate that some online news media have lent their platforms to these desperadoes to ply their odious trade.
He however challenged the perpetrators of the malice to mention the names and true identities of the CSOs and the investigators.
“If the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had been on the matter as indicated in the report, it is then unfair to suggest or claim that some questionable UK/Ireland Investigators are now pushing for an exclusion order to ban me from entering the United Kingdom. One expects that there should be inter-agency collaboration in line with some bilateral or mutual agreements,” he said.
Bello-Koko however said that all the supposed assertions and innuendos in the report are nothing, but malicious concoctions intended to cause predetermined damage.
“I had, on several occasions, stated that the NPA under my leadership is not aware of any secret foreign accounts and I could not have been a beneficiary of something that I am not aware of and, which I would like to emphasise is non – existent to the best of my knowledge,” he said.
He said that the authority had, on July 26, 2022, set the records straight through a publication in reputable Newspapers.
The NPA boss explained that the UK property they mentioned was declared with the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and purchased before I was appointed into public office. It is also important to note that the property was purchased on a 15-year mortgage payment plan.
“As NPA MD, I run an open administration that gives premium to due process in the execution of the agency’s core mandates. Our performances have been recently validated by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), which adjudged the NPA on my watch as a Platinum Level Organisation, consequent upon the deployment of its Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) in the NPA for the independent assessment, validated assessment and in-depth analysis of processes and practices of the agency,” he said.
Flowing from the assessment, he said, the BPSR had returned a verdict of ‘exceptional performance by the NPA with a performance level of 91.25 percent’.
According to Dasuki Arabi, the director general of BPSR, it means that NPA’s performance far exceeded expectations due to the high quality of work in all essential areas of responsibility, resulting in an overall quality of work that is superior, exceptional or unique.
He said the NPA on his watch has recorded some modest achievements such that the NPA generated the sum of N286 billion and remitted over N100 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) account of the federation as of November 2022.
He said the NPA has renewed the concession leases of five terminal operators who would be more responsible for the maintenance of quays, fenders, and allied matters such as port illumination.
Listing other achievements, he said the agency has approved the upgrade of infrastructure at Terminal ‘B’, Berths 7 and 8, Onne Port Complex based on Messrs WACT Nigeria Limited’s proposal for investment exceeding $110 million over a period of two years.
The work, he said, is at 75 percent completion as of the end of October.
“We have increased container holding capacity at Rivers from the conversion of unused space within PTOL Terminal into a stacking area. To improve communication and navigational safety, we have provided and installed 86 buoys for Warri and Calabar Pilotage Districts and have Completed the modernisation of Control Towers at Lagos Port Complex and Tin-Can Island Port which were built in the 1970s,” he said.
Bello-Koko said that NPA under his management has also installed 180 marine fenders on all quays for safe berthing.
Other achievements include the construction of 6,000 metric tons of Bitumen tank in Rivers Port Complex to improve the company’s bitumen storage capacity, which will ease their operations and impact the infrastructure development in the South-South.
“We have provided 24 motorcycles to aid the effective monitoring of truck e-call-up operation at Apapa/TCIPC/Ijora axis to ease the free flow of traffic. We are enforcing the full compliance of trucks to e-call up the regime and Minimum Safety Standard resulting in a significant reduction in the traffic gridlock along the main port corridor.
“We also enforce proper batching, continuous access control mechanisms and movement of cargo via barge operations. We have licensed additional truck parks to increase the capacity of truck parks servicing the Lagos Ports,” he added.
To improve revenue collection, he said, the NPA tightened the collection mechanisms and plugged revenue leakages that resulted in the unprecedented generation of the sum of 286 billion and the remittance of 103 billion as of November 2022 to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation.
He said the NPA recently licensed 10 Export Processing Terminals to facilitate exports at Nigerian seaports, and four terminals are already fully operational.
“The Harbours department of Onne and Calabar ports has secured the International Standard Organization (ISO) certification. There is a reduction in ship waiting time, cargo dwell time and an increase in cargo traffic in the eastern ports,” he said.
He pointed out that the committed efforts of the NPA at advancing trade facilitation recently won the award of “Best Maritime Agency of the Year 2022” at the recently held Daily Telegraph Newspaper.
