The contractor handling repair and extension of the quay wall of Nigeria’s second busiest port, the Tin Can Island Port Complex (TCIPC), Johnaq Engineering Company, has assured that the task will be completed before the end of next month.
Johnaq’s Chief Engineer, Rabiu Danbata, disclosed this yesterday during the visit of members of the Senate Committee on Marine Transport to the port.
Danbata said the contract, awarded in 2009, was to be completed within two years but was later reviewed due to additional work thereby extending the delivery time.
He said the quay wall was originally designed to be 850 meters long, the repair for which his company was contracted to undertake, but later obtained the federal government’s approval to extend it.
“At the start of the contract, the quay wall was supposed to be 850 meters but the Federal Executive Council later reviewed it to 2.64 kilometers,” he said.
Danbata said the initial 850 metres length was to be repaired at the sum of N3.65 billion. He however failed to disclose the additional cost for the extension.
Danbata said that increased cargo traffic at the TCIPC also affected the early delivery of the project.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Marine Transport, Zainab Kure, who led her members on the oversight visit, expressed satisfaction with the extent of work at the port.
“I am impressed with the job done by the agency because we appropriated and the appropriation was judiciously used for what it was meant for,” she said.
She said her committee was focused on ensuring that all projects embarked upon by the various government agencies in the maritime industry are completed before the end of the year.
“We know that not all projects can be completed because of paucity of funds not forgetting also that the budget cannot take care of all the projects. We are here to prioritise the projects and as well make a push for others that are almost completed to be completed,” she said.
Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mallam Habib Abdullahi, informed the committee members when they visited the organisation’s corporate headquarters on Tuesday that the quay wall rehabilitation was 96 per cent completed.
He said NPA paid a lot of attention to the improvement of existing port infrastructures in order to consolidate on the gains of port concession.
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