LADOL, NPA: Crisis of confidence rocks Nigerian ports system
Years after sailing off, the Nigerian ports system may have run into a “crisis of confidence” that cast aspersions on its ambition of measuring up to global best business practices.
According to Wikipedia, “A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest”
This aforementioned scenario is currently playing out in the maritime sector in Nigeria as in the worst patch of its journey to date, the sector is contending with the aberration of a married couple occupying strategic positions with an operator, the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics (LADOL) Base, and the technical regulator and landlord of the nation’s ports, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), respectively.
Notably, while Mr. Tanimu Yakubu, along with Lord Mark Malloch‐Brown, and Professor Fidelis Oditah, is a member of LADOL’s pioneer Technical Advisory Board, his spouse, Ms. Hadiza Bala Usman, is the NPA Managing Director.
The appointments of Yakubu and his two other colleagues had been announced by the LADOL Management on December 20, 2015, while that of Usman as NPA boss by President Muhammadu Buhari became effective from July 11, 2016.
Usman’s appointment, according to stakeholders, cast doubts on the veracity of the requisite background checks on her by the Federal Government to confirm her suitability or otherwise for the position, notably on account of conflict of interests with her husband being a top official of LADOL.
Interestingly, Usman’s spousal links to Yakubu and its potentials of generating conflict of interests in the execution of her brief, including regulating the activities of operators such as LADOL, was allegedly ignored with her confirmation as the henchman of NPA.
Concerned industry watchers, however, have been expressing angst that having Yakubu and Usman in their positions at LADOL and the NPA, respectively, cast doubts on the integrity of the Nigerian ports system, positing that undue influences between the duo are bound to be brought to bear negatively on the operations of the system.
Until her appointment, taking over from the immediate past NPA Managing Director, Mallam Habibu Abdullahi, Usman was serving as the Chief of Staff to Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai.
Usman, who is the third wife of Yakubu and a mother of two, does not bear the name of her husband but that of her late father, Dr Bala Usman, the fiery lecturer who was at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, Kaduna State.
