The House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Accounts has ordered the Nigerian Ports Authority to immediately call a meeting with firms operating Nigeria’s ports to determine their actual indebtedness to the Federal Government.
This is based on an audit query issued by the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation claims that 18 port terminal operators had failed to remit total sums of $753m and N1.61bn to the government.
Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, ordered the reconciliation meeting at an investigative hearing after one of the terminal operators listed by the NPA as one of the debtors denied owing $4.04m.
Oke said the Bureau for Public Enterprises and some of the committee members should be part of the meeting.
According to him, the reconciliation is necessary resolve the controversy between the two parties over the actual amounts owed the government.
Oke noted that the terminal operators were invited by the committee to file their defence, adding that the government is in dire need of revenue to meet certain obligations.
The lawmaker said, “I want Nigerians to understand why we invited private companies. Ordinarily, we have no business with private companies. The Auditor General for the Federation indicted terminal operators for being indebted to the Nigerian Ports Authority.
“We invited the NPA and they have made their submission and gave us their breakdown of what the terminal operators are owing them and that they tried severally to recover the money. For fair hearing, we have invited you because we cannot shelve your head in your absence. That is why we had to invite you so that we can hear your side of the story because we are at a crossroads.
“Nigeria is looking for money. Our children are at home and we need to pay ASUU and we have other serious issues to attend to. You have heard how much you are owing based on NPA records.”
Earlier, General Manager, Finance, Tin Can Island Port Container Terminal, Kunle Adigun, stated that the firm did not owe the government, while accusing the NPA of failing to respond to several letters calling for reconciliation of figures.
Adigun said, “Several times, we have made several appeals for NPA to come to the table for us to discuss. We have been writing letters since 2015, but no response. Our anniversary date is June because we started operation on June 1, 2006. So, if there is going to be any changes, it should take effect from June 1. But NPA changed our charges on throughput in March and pushed our anniversary date back to March.
“This is not in line with the agreement we have with them. We told them that this is wrong. We sent several letters to them to change the throughput figures, but they never responded. I hope this meeting will help resolve that.
“Apart from that, we are entitled to some GMT. We have written several letters on that too, but NPA has not responded to that too. If you look at it technically, it would appear as if TICT is owing. But in the real sense of it, TICT is not owing NPA dime.”
When asked if he had seen the submission by the management of NPA to the committee, Adigun responded in the negative. He, however, admitted that the NPA had written to the TICT several times insisting that the company was indebted to the Authority.
“We told them that we should reconcile because we don’t know where that was coming from. There was a time they even sent a figure,” he added.
The Head, Legal Department, TICT, Mary-Anne Olopade, noted that if the NPA had agreed to a reconciliation meeting with the company, there would have been no need for that investigative hearing.
“We are not saying NPA should not apply the CPIU because we know it will come into effect, but we are saying it should be applied within the agreement period. But they have not complied with the terms of the agreement. Applying it from March means that they are applying it three months before we came into operation. We have written them several letters, we do audit with them every quarter and on each occasion, we bring up this issue. Even before this committee, we have letters showing that as of 2015, we have letters inviting them for a meeting. If they had sat down with us, this meeting will not be happening today.
“We are saying that if we apply the CPIU properly, look at the GMT and the right the NPA is supposed to grant to us, then, we will get the rightful figure that may be outstanding and when we get those figures, we will do the needful. We are saying that calculation from March to June is wrong,” she said.
