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Stories by Steve Agbota [email protected]
The plan to return the Nigerian Navy to the port may see more Nigerian bound cargo diverted to neighbouring ports over rising clearance cost.
This comes as stakeholders fear that high cost of cargo clearance, duplicated tariffs as well as lengthy and cumbersome procedures, will combine to make Nigerian ports the most expensive in the world.
Over the last few years, 60 per cent of cargoes meant for Nigerian ports have been shipped to other West African ports, including Togo, Ghana, Cotonou, Cameroun, due to high cost of doing business and delay in cargo clearance, forcing the Nigeria’s economy lose billions of dollars annually.
One major reasons importers are leaving Nigerian ports to neighbouring countries is the presence of multiple government agencies at the ports now constituting pains for importers and clearing agents. It is against this backdrop that stakeholders have cried out to Federal Government to reduce the number of its agencies operating at the port.
Due to the lamentations of stakeholders, the Vice President and Chairman of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, in 2018 directed the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to ensure that only eight Federal Government agencies are allowed to operate and have physical representation at all port locations in the country.
According to the directive, agencies allowed representation at the ports are Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Police Force, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Department of State Security (DSS), Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and Port Health.
Agencies not mentioned in the list above should, according to the directive, vacate the ports’ premises and carry out their regulatory functions from outside the port locations. The decision was part of government’s efforts to improve efficiency in port operations
However, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, last week during a webinar to mark the 100 days of the service chiefs in office, said that the Navy has secured the approval of the government to return to the ports, 30 years after it was kicked out.
The government, according to Vice Admiral Gambo, wanted the Navy back at the ports to check the indiscriminate entry of small arms through the Ports.
“We have realised that arms are circulating indiscriminately and their effects are devastating. Our efforts in combating their proliferation must therefore be viewed as contributing to the good, rather than a zero-sum game.
“The Navy has been out of the ports for three decades. We are working with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to establish port commandant at the seaports.’’ the Naval Chief has said.
However, maritime stakeholders have universally described the return of the Navy to the nation’s economy gateway as unnecessary, which is capable of adding to the costs of goods clearance at the ports.
Speaking with Daily Sun, the Vice President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Kayode Farinto, said the interest of the Navy to return to the port is to have a share of the national cake.
According to him, the move portrays that the government is confused and lacks initiative on how to tackle the rising insecurity in the country.
Conversely, he added that the Navy would merely constitute a nuisance at the ports the way they did in 1993/94, and wondered what value they will add to the operations of the port other than to encumber the process.
“About 90 percent of arms and ammunitions come through the unapproved routes and not the ports. So government should deploy them to areas where there are gaps in the security architecture of the country. I just want to say that the government of the day is confused and if we look at it, if the government is serious, we will know that 90 per cent of these illegitimate arms are coming in through unapproved roots.
He said that the action of the Federal Government to bring back the Navy into the ports is not in line with the international best practice. He, therefore, commended the Nigeria Customs Service and security agencies in the port for a job well down despite the absence of scanner in the port, the agencies as been up to date.
He said that if eventually, the Navy returns back to the ports, Nigeria will become a laughing stock in the comity of maritime nations because this negates the international best practices.
Meanwhile, the President of Shippers Association of Lagos State (SALS), Rev. Jonathan Nicol, also condemned the decision to return Navy to the ports.
“Nigeria Customs is paramilitary and saddled with the responsibility of opening up containers for examination and I am convinced they are up to the task. The Nigerian Navy should be concerned with our territorial waters and the Gulf of Guinea where we have so much security challenges bedeviling the country.
“Already, we have government agencies at the port doing almost the same thing such that it is difficult to exit cargoes from the seaports, so why will they want to add to the burden? They should concentrate on the coastal waters where piracy is expected to be combated,” he said.
Nicol believe that the bulk of the small arms and ammunition are not coming in through the seaports but through the porous borders because of the hassles involved in 100 per cent examination.
“We don’t need an additional agency at the port because shippers that own cargoes coming to Nigerian seaports are already overburdened by the activities of government agencies at the port,” he warned.
However, the National President, Africa Association of Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics in Nigeria (APFFLON), Otunba Frank Ogunojemite, opined that the Navy at the seaports would not solve the proliferation of light and small arms into the country.
According to him, they will rather add to the cumbersome nature of cargo clearance in the nation’s seaports.
Ogunojemite asked the government to ensure the implementation of the Cargo Tracking Note (CTN), which he believed would help to know the type of cargo coming into the country, whether small arms are in them.
“Also, the government should collaborate with countries of origin because most containers busted are due to information from the country of origin. What is wrong with the scanners at the seaports? The government should put them into work also. They should inform us about the purchase of scanners. We should put the scanners into use and they should function accordingly.”
He also asked Government to deploy technology to monitor the nation’s porous borders where he said these arms and ammunitions are coming through.
