WASHINGTON: The Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mallam Habib Abdullahi, has sought the support of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) to review its agreements with terminal operators. Abdullahi made the appeal during his meeting with the Director-General of the ICRC, Mr Aminu Dikko. He said the review of the agreements would boost activities at the ports, giving room for better ports operations and more investor participation.
Abdullahi said the development of access roads to the Lekki Deep Seaport project would ease transactions. He said NPA intends to synergise with the ICRC and other stakeholders to develop fisheries at the Kirikiri Lighter Terminal 2, and turn it into a modern fishing terminal. He canvassed the dredging and maintenance of water channels at the Calabar and Warri ports through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach.
The NPA boss said that agricultural exportation could be achieved with ease if there were rail lines to help in transporting agricultural produce to the port terminals. He suggested that the ports could be decongested of containers by using them to export solid minerals and agricultural produce to other parts of the world.
In his speech, Dikko promised to fully support the NPA in its drive to achieve its set goals. He, however, said that for the agency to attract investors there must be a ports master plan to guide it. He noted that the master plan would also inform investors on the activities of the agency and the nation as a whole and guide them on what to invest in. He praised the NPA for setting up a PPP unit and assured that the ICRC would help build the capacity of staff in the department.
