Checking revenue leakages at seaports

Workers of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) recently raised alarm over increasing revenue leakages at the nation’s seaports. The President of the NPA branch of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) Mr. Adeleke Sanni stated in an interview with reporters that the agency was losing billions of naira in revenue due to improper monitoring […]

Workers of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) recently raised alarm over increasing revenue leakages at the nation’s seaports. The President of the NPA branch of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) Mr. Adeleke Sanni stated in an interview with reporters that the agency was losing billions of naira in revenue due to improper monitoring of revenue collection by terminal operators at the ports. Sanni attributed this lapse to shortage of manpower particularly at the lower cadres of the NPA workforce.
According to Mr. Sanni, the current staff strength at the NPA is not in favour of lower cadre workers who are ordinarily required to be on the field to monitor revenue generation and collection at the ports; decrying the large number of senior cadre staff whose schedules, most often, require them to stay back in their offices to take decisions.
NPA, which was established in 1954, is a wholly government owned organization that operates under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Transport with the responsibility of providing specific ports and harbour services for the country’s maritime industry. Today, NPA controls 8 major ports excluding oil terminals with a cargo handling capacity of 35 million tons per annum.
The statutory functions of the NPA include the provision and operation of cargo handling facilities; pilotage and towage services; supply of water and fuel to vessels at anchorage and mooring buoys; repairs and maintenance of buoys; dredging and contract dredging of water ways; navigational lighting of the ports; and other ancillary services.
It is heart-warming that the re-instated Managing Director of the NPA Mallam Habib Abdullahi recently unveiled an integrated Revenue Invoicing Management System (RIMS) to block all revenue leakages at the seaports. The initiative is expected to, among other benefits, lower operational cost and cut down the length of time spent on documentation in order to improve efficiency in port operations as well as give value to all stakeholders.
Abdullahi further observed that the Electronic Payment system as well as the Electronic Ship Entry Notice (E-Sen) that were introduced by the NPA in February and September 2014 was the first strategic step towards full automation of its processes. This is a laudable measure as port operations which involve a network of processes and documentations absolutely make the coordination of the activities and processes through automation necessary. Abdullahi noted that the new system has the potential to improve NPA’s service delivery; adding that such will maximize returns collection and minimize loss associated with fraud and revenue leakage.
Beside the RIMS introduced by the NPA, it is important for the agency’s management to equally examine the top-heavy syndrome hindering the effective monitoring of NPA’s revenue drive with a view to increasing its’ existing workforce in the lower cadres. This is because revenue generation by the NPA, as argued by Mr. Adeleke Sanni, takes place at the seaports, not in the office apartments of the agency.
There is, therefore, need to employ and deploy enough human resources to monitor the concession areas of the ports to prevent leakages in the revenue earnings due to the agency. It is not in the economic interest of government to rely on what terminal operators declare as revenue generated at the ports. The NPA will be running at a loss if it fails to put in place an internal mechanism that will ascertain the accuracy of the figures declared by concessionaires as the revenue due to the agency. MWNUN alleges that only a portion of the amount due to NPA as revenue is paid by the concessionaires.
While we encourage stakeholders in the maritime sector to key in to the RIMS scheme, we also urge authorities at the NPA to continue to think of efficient ways of blocking all forms of revenue leakages at the seaports. We equally advise concessionaires to strictly adhere to the terms of concession agreed upon. The NPA has the sole responsibility of ensuring compliance to concession terms by concessionaires.