Business
NPA Enforces Minimum Safety Standards At Ports
L-R: Council Member Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (eccima), Mr Ndukwo Ogbuja, eccima Vice President Public Affairs, Lady Claire Asogwa and representative of Tata Africa, Mr Charles Ofoma, during eccima’s visit to Tata Stand at the ongoing 27th Enugu International Trade Fair in Enugu last Wednesday.
Despite protest by the
various truck associations against the N10,000 vehicle entry permit, levy payment into the nation’s seaports by the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), the ports management has announced the commencement of the standards at the nations seaports in compliance with the Federal Government’s directive.
Speaking in Lagos shortly after the official flag off of the new rule recently, the Managing Director of NPA, Habib Abdullahi, said that the enforcement of human safety standards is for haulage trucks operating in the nation’s seaport terminals.
Abdullahi said all rickety trucks that have not been inspected and registered by the NPA authorities will no longer be allowed into the ports across the nation, stressing that about 2,000 trucks have met the minimum safety standards that would be granted access to the ports to load and offload consignment.
He said the aim of the new rule was to promote port safety security and also ensure stricter monitoring of trucks and their drivers.
He said that it is part of the core resonsiblities of NPA to ensure that trucks accessing the ports meet acceptable international standards adding that the fact that people are paying N10,000 per annum is to ensure the administrative cost, and that NPA is even subsidizing it if not, the fee would have been more.
The NPA MD said, “for a very long time, we have been experiencing containers falling down and killing innocent citizens; this is of great concern to us and we feel that to go along with international standards, it is our responsibility to ensure that all trucks getting into the port are maintained and secured, as it applies in other countries”.
He urged truck operators to resist and report cases of extortion by appropriate authorities while complying with the directive for minimum safety standards.
The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has said that Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrolments rose by 6.8 per cent year-on-year to 67.8 million as at December 2025, up from 63.5 million recorded in the corresponding period of 2024.
In a statement published on its website, NIBSS attributed the growth to stronger policy enforcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the expansion of diaspora enrolment initiatives.
NIBSS noted that the expansion reinforces the BVN system’s central role in Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive and digital identity framework.
Another major driver, the statement said, was the rollout of the Non-Resident Bank Verification Number (NRBVN) initiative, which allows Nigerians in the diaspora to obtain a BVN remotely without physical presence in the country.
A five-year analysis by NIBSS showed consistent growth in BVN enrolments, rising from 51.9 million in 2021 to 56.0 million in 2022, 60.1 million in 2023, 63.5 million in 2024 and 67.8 million by December 2025. The steady increase reflects stronger compliance with biometric identity requirements and improved coverage of the national banking identity system.
However, NIBSS noted that BVN enrolments still lag the total number of active bank accounts, which exceeded 320 million as of March 2025.
The gap, it explained, is largely due to multiple bank accounts linked to single BVNs, as well as customers yet to complete enrolment, despite the progress recorded.