Apart from recovering some trapped fund within her first 100 days in office, the managing director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ms. Hadiza Usman has given indication that some of the over N180billion debt owed the agency by private companies and government agencies may be considered bad debt and therefore written off soon.
Addressing select senior Maritime media executives in Lagos as part of programmes to mark her first 100 days in office, she admitted that part of the amount could be classified as bad debt as it had been outstanding for more than 10 years.
Usman was of the view that “most of the entries which constitute the ‘bad debt’ were made on land leased out by the organization to private companies but which were encumbered and could not be possessed by the lessees. She said appropriate steps would be taken to write the debt off NPA’s books”.
She gave an exemplary scenario of how some of the debts got built up, saying there are some land lease deals by NPA which were not consummated within the given time due to no access also caused by no provision of logistics by the same NPA and as such, we cannot say that such debt pile up over the years are good debt but bad ones and should be dropped.
On due process in procurement and contract deliveries, Usman said her administration has warned that contractors who fail to fully execute their briefs or fulfll their contractual obligations risk being blacklisted.
“We cannot have contractors collecting our money and not do what is required. We have directed our procurement department to put in place structured framework which will be signed where contractors will be blacklisted from future contracts in the Nigerian Ports Authority and we have also discussed this with the Bureau of Public Procurement to convey our concerns with the fact that we are having contractors that are not performing on their contracts.”
