The Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu has vowed to dredge the Calabar Port if elected as Nigeria’s President in 2023.
He said this while making his acceptance speech shortly after he was elected as the flag bearer of the APC for the 2023 general election.
Tinubu said that the dredging of Calabar Port would make the port more functional and open up economic activities for Nigeria.
This, according to him, would make it possible for Nigerians to earn more revenue from export.
He decried the current situation where Nigeria depends on importation for its survival, stating that this would not continue if he succeeds Buhari in 2023.
Dredging has been the most critical challenge of the Calabar Port, as it was shallow with a depth of 5.2 metres at low tide. Experts have said that dredging must be done to at least 9.4 metre.
The first contract for the dredging of the Calabar Port channel was awarded in 1996 during the administration of the late General Sani Abacha to a Chinese company that showed up for a while and simply vanished.
The contract was re-awarded to two Dutch firms –Van Oord and Jan de Nul at the cost of N3bn. Both firms did the job half way and left amidst a cloud of controversy.
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Ten years later, in 2006, the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo re-awarded the contract to the same firms to dredge the 84km channel. The sum of N20.44bn was given to them for the job.
The entire length of the channel was divided between the two firms. While Van Oord was paid $26m to dredge the first 44 kilometres, Jan de Nul got $30m to dredge the last 40 kilometers of the channel with the funny instruction that the two firms should scoop out 25 million cubic metres of sand to achieve an overall draft of eight metre.
After some work done, the channel remained the same while, the two companies left saying they had done their job having scooped out the stipulated 25million cubic metres of sand.
As the dispute continued, later a former Transport Minister, Dr. Abiye Sekibo awarded another $14m contract to the two firms to complete the job, but the money still went down the drain.
In 2014, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration came up with a new model for the channel. It awarded the dredging contract to Niger Global Engineering and Technical Company Limited (NGETCL) at the cost of N20b.
The company was to manage the Calabar Channel Management Limited (CCMCL) which had just been established. CCMCL was a joint venture between Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Niger Global Engineering and Technical Limited.
The contract was terminated in August 2017 over alleged fraud in the award process and shoddy execution of the dredging contract.
The Calabar Port also has the challenge of the access road and lack of incentives to shippers of all cargo types to the Port, which was hindering the Port from attaining its full potential.
