A group, Concerned
...Victoria Silvanus
Maritime Operators (CMO), under the aegis of the Barge Operators has petitioned the federal government over the revocation of her members' licences by the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) a year after Issuance.
The Coordinator of the group, Mr. Oladapo Oduneye, decried the way some of his members operational licenses was revoked without the due process and in line with constitution provisions.
It would be recalled that NPA granted a number of our members companies licences to conduct jetty and barging operations along the stretch of waterways across the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway from the main facilities of the Tin-Can Island Port Complex (TCIPC) are in Apapa.
He said each of the operational licences of the six affected indigenous companies granting each of them their one-year leases which are all still valid, having commenced operations between January and March 2021.
Oduneye said those members whose licenses are suspended have contributed in a lot of ways
to promote govt policy on Easy- of- Doing -Business.
"Efforts of the affected companies, individually and collectively, alongside those of our other members, have contributed immeasurably in finally ameliorating the hitherto intractable gridlock at the Lagos ports access roads by moving huge volumes of cargoes safer, cheaper and more conveniently through the waterways, contributing immensely to facilitating the Buhari administration's policy of ease-of-doing-business". The action of the NPA is high-handed and at best a travesty against justice, because the various leases, which are all fully paid upfront, had only gone a negligible fraction of their respective tenures before revocation hammer hit them.
He said the arbitrary action of the NPA saw the wanton destruction of the structures, equipment and other investments belonging to the licencees at the lease sites located between the TCIPC first and second gates by Port Novo Creek in a ruthless illegal mission enforced by a joint task force of heavily-armed military and paramilitary personnel mustered and deployed by NPA.
Consequently, no less than six thousand persons employed directly and indirectly by the affected operators have been rendered redundant under the prevailing galloping inflation and insecurity sweeping across Nigeria.
Similarly, he said the revocation has cost the affected operators huge losses in terms of revoked contracts with foreign investors, painting Nigeria before the international community as an unstable investment destination.
" It is baffling that under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, which has done, and continues to do, so much in deploying stimulus packages to alleviate poverty through supportive policies, including boosting local content and financial incentives to entrepreneurs, an institution of the Federal Government, such as the NPA, is engaging in antics that are antithetical to gainful legitimate businesses and will throw several persons into the already congested unemployment market."
"We unequivocally state that, in rendering those ill-concieved no revocations, the NPA had taken a dim, callous and selfish stand on the issue.
"Clearly, in giving effect to the conditions in the Licence Agreements signed between the respective licencees and the NPA, the Authority's revocation orders on our affected members' leases or Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL) were not informed by strict adherence to the principles of the public interest, but skewed to favour some land grabing vested interests set on a course of hostile takeover of a hitherto dormant location that the smart and hard work of our members breathed a new lease of life.
According to him "the sections of Licence Agreement the NPA has taken undue advantage of state in part".
