The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives is investigating the Nigerian Ports Authority and Ports and Terminal Operators (Nigeria) Limited.
The ongoing probe is due to the agency’s failure to remit lease and throughput fees collected between 2006 and June 2022, amounting to $68.473m to the Federal Government.
The committee is also investigating PTOL for allegedly using an exchange rate different from the official one approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria in calculating revenue accruing to the government.
The Office of the Auditor General for the Federation raised the issues in an audit query in the annual report presented to the National Assembly.
The Managing Director of the NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko, had in a submission to the committee, alleged that one of the port operators in charge of the Port Harcourt port in Rivers State and PTOL used their exchange rates in calculating revenue.
Bello-Koko said PTOL used N116 to the dollar at a time when the official exchange rate was fixed at N305 to the dollar by the CBN in 2016.
The written presentation by the NPA, dated July 27, 2022, was in response to a letter from the committee.
According to the NPA, even while using another exchange rate of N151 agreed to after reconciliation, the terminal operator was still indebted to the government to the tune of $68.473m as of October 13, 2021.
