Extortion increasing along port access roads – NPA

Days after the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority and the Lagos State Government commenced the clearing of shanties along the port access roads, the NPA has said there is an increasing extortion along the access roads of the Lagos and Tin Can Island Port Complexes.

This was contained in a statement on Tuesday by NPA.

The authority had between July 16 and 18, rid the port corridor of shanties and illegal structures which harboured criminal elements that perpetrated these acts of extortion.

The Managing Director of NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko, during the clearing of the shanties, lamented that these acts of extortion and allied illegalities are injurious to trade facilitation.

“Trade facilitation is our core function and we cannot allow these nefarious characters make nonsense of the gateways to the national economy which the ports constitute,” he said.

In the statement, the NPA boss vowed to deal with any staff member involved in the extortion.

Bello-Koko said, “We had in the past visited punitive measures on of our staff who were complicit in such unethical practices, and I want to reiterate that once we are confronted with evidence of any our staff involved in these acts of sabotage, we would sanction them in line with the public service rules and our conditions of service which has zero tolerance for such malfeasance.”