The immediate past managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hajia Hadiza Bala Usman, has revealed why Rotimi Amaechi, a former minister of transportation, hounded and persecuted her for selfish reasons while also accusing her of having not done anything for him just because she didn’t send him a birthday gift.
She made the claim in her new book, “Stepping on Toes: My Odyssey at the Nigerian Ports Authority,” which was published on Tuesday, April 11.
According to her, the minister urged her to “step aside” in May 2021, and the former NPA leader also disclosed that many prominent Nigerians met with her to try to end their animosity.
All pleas to the minister that she should be reinstated from governors, the head of Customs, and others fell on deaf ears while citing flimsy excuses of her being selfish and also her purported failure to do “nothing for anyone.”
“Interest groups and leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) also tried to intervene. I know for instance that Governors elected on the platform of the APC, the Progressive Governors Forum, chaired by Governor Atiku Bagudu deliberated on the issue of my suspension and constituted a committee to intervene,” she wrote in the book.
The Governors’ team met with the Minister to discuss a resolution of the matter. He insisted that my management of the NPA had to be investigated due to the amount unremitted to the CRF [Consolidated Revenue Fund]. He even tried to Sway the governors’ resolve by suggesting that the budget of the NPA was bigger than most of their state budgets so they shouldn’t bother about me.
When the governors persisted, he told them that the matter was no longer within his control and that they may need to approach the Head of Service of the Federation. He told another person who tried to intervene that I was so selfish and that l did nothing for him from NPA and never even gave him a birthday present! The Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (Rtd.) also made efforts to resolve the issue by intervening at various levels.”
She also described how the minister tried to frame her with false claims that she failed to deposit operational surpluses into the CRF in the book, stressing that the investigating panel’s lengthy inquiry never produced any evidence of her wrongdoing to date.
