The dredging of the Calabar Port channel cannot be done until all the issues surrounding the contract award for the dredging of the channel have been resolved.
The Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), MalamHabib Abdullahi, disclosed this to newsmen over the weekend that government has approved a new joint venture (JV) partner for the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) for the dredging of Calabar port channel.
He, however, said that the JV will not start work until issues bedeviling the dredging contract were resolved.
Calabar channel dredging has become the most controversial all NPA’s contracts. The contract has been awarded and re-awarded several times. Sometimes, there were claims that the channel had been dredged, yet the channel remains non-navigable and shallow and unable to attract sizeable vessels to boost business at the port.
In 2005, contracts for the management of the four channels in Nigeria were advertized. They included: Lagos, Bonny, Calabar and Warri channels. The bid was conducted internationally by Mobotek, a Holland consulting firm where about 49 international companies applied.
At the end of the pre-qualification exercise involving the technical and financial bids verification with series of bid clarification meetings between NPA, Federal Ministry of Transport, some companies emerged.
These include DEPASSA leading a consortium of companies for Lagos Channel, Dredging International Services leading a consortium of companies for Bonny Channel, Niger Global Engineering leading a consortium of companies for Calabar Channel and Forby Engineering leading a consortium of companies for Warri Channel.
However, even though the management of Lagos and Bonny Channels were executed, the ones in Calabar and Warri were not executed. The Calabar dredging contract may have been won by Calabar Channel Management Limited
Sources put equity participation in the joint venture agreement at 60 per cent for NPA and 40 per cent for the company, in the ratio of 160 million shares belonging to NPA and 140 million to the firm.
But the contract ran into a hitch following a strong petition by the NPA Board Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih.
In a five-page petition to the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, Mr. Anenih appealed to the minister to cancel the joint venture agreement which was made on January 25th 2013 between NPA and the consortium and direct the representatives of the Board of NPA, Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Justice to appraise the agreement critically and produce an acceptable joint venture and management agreement that will be in line with observed lapses and the observations of the Ministry of Justice which were not reflected in the agreement.
The petition also directed the managing director of NPA, MallamHabibAbdullahi to suspend the 60 per cent subscription fee payment to the joint venture.
