GABRIELE Volpi, majority shareholder of maritime logistics company, Intels Nigeria Limited, has apologised to the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, and the Nigeria government over the crisis that led to termination of the company’s pilotage agreement.

Volpi who co-founded Intels with Atiku Abubakar, former vice president, explained that he was not involved in the botched negotiation between Intels and the NPA and pledged that his company would transfer all the revenue collected from the boat monitoring and supervision services to the Treasury Single Account, TSA, as the NPA had demanded.

“We want to apologise to the federal government and NPA over this disagreement with Intels. I was not personally involved in the negotiations with NPA, but we apologise for what has happened.

We intend to comply with the directive of government and transfer all the revenue to the TSA because we are a law-abiding company,”  Volpi was quoted as saying in an interview with ThisDay.

He said Intels would cooperate with the federal government and the NPA in the development of Nigeria’s maritime sector, including the construction of the Badagry deep seaport in Lagos State.

Following the revocation of its pilotage contract, Intels had threatened to walk away from its multi-billion dollars investment at the Badagry deep seaport in Lagos.

“We are committed to co-operating with the government and NPA in the development of Nigeria’s maritime sector and this includes the Badagry deep seaport. The Badagry deep seaport is a massive undertaking which will cost billions of dollars and will be the biggest in Africa and would turn Nigeria into a regional hub for ships bringing goods to the continent.

“It will also help to move a lot of shipping activities at the Apapa and Tin-can Island ports and help to decongest Apapa, so we are serious about our investments in Nigeria,” Volpi said. – ThisDay

– Oct 20, 2017 @ 17:20 GMT |