INTELS Nigeria Limited has paid $42.6 million (N13.2 billion) into the coffers of the Federal Government through the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Treasury Single Account (TSA), the Managing Director of NPA, Ms. Hadiza Bala Usman has said.
Following the payment, the controversy surrounding the contract between INTELS and the NPA may have eased off as the key area of disagreement was the failure of the concessionaire to pay the money meant for the government agency into the TSA.
Usman who stated this while addressing members of the House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee set up by the lower chamber of the National Assembly to probe the matter in the wake of the controversy on the provisions of the contract agreement, pointed out that the concessionaire after receiving termination notice wrote to apologise for not complying with TSA and the new sharing formula.
According to Usman, INTELS has paid the sum of $28.1million into NPA TSA account with a notice of additional $14.5million said to have been paid, but yet to be confirmed by the authority. The implementation of TSA by the Federal Government compelled the authority to remit revenue generated directly into government coffers while NPA in turn pays agency fees of 28 percent of whatever was generated to INTELS.
Usman explained that by NPA’s calculation of $4 million per month as government’s share, based on the previous agreement, what accrued to NPA would be $48 million.
She also explained that NPA has two layers of relationship with INTELS, namely management agency where it collects revenues on behalf of NPA and keeps 28 percent and port infrastructure development on the basis of which INTELS constructed and manages the Onne port in Rivers State.
The NPA Managing Director explained that the initial agreement gave INTEL the powers to generate and keep 28 percent of revenue collected on behalf of NPA.
Her words: “The NPA under the new management had to come up with a new draft that incorporated a sharing formula in a model that complies with the TSA, which was why we said they should start remitting directly to the TSA while the NPA pays its 28 percent agency fees. The agreement expires in 2020 which makes it 10 years”.
