Champion award: NPA wins 2023’s Government Agency Category Award
The Champion Newspapers Limited has announced the Nigerian Ports Authority as the winner of the government agency category Award for 2023.
The media outfit, in a statement on Tuesday, also announced the Managing Director of NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko, as the winner of the Most Outstanding Public Servant award.
According to the management of the newspapers, NPA has shown commitment to its mission of delivering efficient port services in a safe, secure, and customer-friendly environment and stood out as a maritime logistics hub for sustainable port services in Africa.
The General Managing Director of Champion Newspapers Limited, Dr. Mrs. Nwadiuto Iheakanwa, said the agency was lauded for its unique initiatives in 2023 channeled toward enhancing the frontiers of trade facilitation, which climaxed in the operationalisation of the Lekki Deep Seaport.
She described Bello-Koko as one of the leading chief executive officers in the country, who had distinguished himself as a dynamic business administrator, innovative manager, and technocrat while exhibiting a high degree of integrity and transparency in both private and public affairs.
She explained that the twin award was a product of the painstaking selection of the board of editors, adding that it was the company’s modest way of recognising institutions and leaders in both public and private sectors of the economy that had made a greater sacrifice in ensuring that the fundamental objectives and ideals of our nationhood are sustained.
“On all scores, our findings, largely corroborated by that of independent assessors, confirm that NPA, under your management in the last four years, has received fresh impetus due largely to your exemplary leadership skills, sustained its solid tradition of excellence and trajectory as an agency of first choice and agency that has made the country proud and contributed immensely to its economic and social development,” she said.
The PUNCH reports that the NPA under Bello-Koko grew revenue from N361bn in 2022 to N501bn in 2023 and remittances to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation improved to N131.2bn last year from N93.4bn in 2022.
The authority explained, “Taxes paid into the federal account also rose at various times in the period under review up to $44m, $33.7m, N7.3bn and N10.3bn, respectively,”
“In response to the national exigency of strengthening the naira by deepening Nigeria’s balance of trade through the promotion of exports, especially non-oil exports, the NPA in the period under review licensed 10 Export Processing Terminals to facilitate exports, at Nigerian Seaports.
“This move, which provided a one-stop shop for export processing, where quality control, cargo assessment, and statutory checks by all government agencies were carried out, was geared towards eliminating all bureaucracy and attendant delays that hitherto undermined the competitiveness of Nigerian Exports in the International market place.”
