Was there revenue increase at the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy?

By Afolabi Oluwaseun (Cauker Johnson)*

I've come across some newspaper headline in many social media platforms on revenue performance at the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, which is headed by a former Governor of Osun state, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola. In fairness to the media platforms, they got the idea of the headline from Oyetola's presentation at the Ministerial briefing to mark President Bola Tinubu's one year in office where he said "A comparison of quarter 1 2023 against quarter 1 2024 revenue performance across the agencies reveals a 92% increase."

Is Oyetola right? Well, let's look at the numbers. Going by Oyetola's disclosure, the revenue across agencies under his Ministry in the first quarter of 2023 is N126,000,000,000.00. Comparing that and the N242bn quoted earning of quarter 1 2024 by Oyetola, on the surface, seems to be good and something to celebrate as we have seen across social media by his supporters so far.

But there is something that may put off the claim of Oyetola. The top revenue generating agency under the Ministry that Oyetola is supervising is the Nigeria Port Authority (NPA). I'm sure you have heard about the agency but what you may seem not to know is that the agency generate its revenue in dollars. Unbelievable!

Well, let me refer you to a disclosure by the Acting General Manager of Corporate and Strategic Communication of the NPA, Mrs. Sarah Ballah, sometime in February this year. Mrs. Ballah, who is the Spokesperson for NPA, disclosed to the PUNCH newspaper during a chat that "First and foremost, NPA transactions are international because maritime businesses are international. And since we are dealing with an international community, some transactions have to be done based on the internationally acceptable medium of exchange. The dollar is a common medium of exchange international."

With this in mind, the best way one can have the assessment of whether Oyetola Ministry did better in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the first quarter of 2023 is to look at the earnings in dollar and not naira. So, the N124,920,000,000.00 revenue for the first quarter of 2023 will amount to $262,500,000.00 at N480 to a dollar. And the N242,000,000,000.00 revenue for the first quarter of 2024 will amount to $172,857,142.86 at N1400 to a dollar.

If the above numbers should tell us anything, it will be that the revenue for the first quarter of 2024 shrinked significantly contrary to the impression that Oyetola tried to sell, if it is measured in dollar, which is the currency mainly used by the biggest source of revenue for the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy.

• Afolabi writes from Otan-Aiyegbaju, Boluwaduro local government