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Steve Agbota, [email protected]
As President Buhari Muhammadu had given indications that the cabinet minister who will support him pilot his second term agenda will be sworn in on August 21, 2019, Nigerians are now looking forward to the unveiling of these supermen expected to confront the nation’s humongous infrastructural and socio-economic challenges over the next four years .
On that day however, 43 ministers including a Minister of Transportation will take their Oat office before top government functionaries and other invited dignitaries as other Nigerians will be watching the ceremony in the full glare of the major mass media organisations across the country.
Like in all other sectors of the economy , the maritime sector, which falls under the Ministry of Transportation, will welcome its own new Minister.
However, based on his perceived ‘performance’, those who benefited from the former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amechi, have tipped him to return to the ministry to conclude the work he started.
But a section of Maritime stakeholders are however yearning for a new beginning to take the mantle of leadership in the Ministry of Transportation to give Amaechi an opportunity to try his hands on other areas .
This according to them is because maritime sector is seen as the second highest revenue earner for Nigeria after oil and gas, despite being neglected for years both by past and the present governments.
Critics of the Amaechi first tenure were for instance alarmed that with about six ports across the country, none could boast of good access roads, holding bay and other critical infrastructure that make ports a viable enterprise.
This is even as two of the most active ports in Lagos-Apapa and Tin Can Island ports are facing numerous challenges, including poor infrastructure like rail, quay, buildings, equipment, and yard hence their perennial heavily congestions which have led to insecurity and pilferage, delays in cargo clearance and inefficiencies in cargo handling largely due to the manual processes in use at the ports.
Under the immediate past regime, the business of import and export suffered significantly due to huge evacuation costs, with trucks spending weeks on queues to gain access into the port terminal.
Stakeholders who spoke with Daily Sun, said part of the problems at the ports remained the lack of trailer parks and holding bays on the one hand as most port access roads are still used as holding bays for trucks, empty containers and the containers going into the ports. This is in addition to Nigerian port being among the most expensive in the world, which is why almost 70 per cent of Nigeria bound cargoes are diverted into other neigbouring ports.
They have therefore tasked the incoming minister to leave politics and hit the ground running immediately by addressing the challenges listed by stakeholders.
They have argued that reactivating the rail links across the ports would address the traffic gridlock on the nation’s port roads by enhancing easy evacuation of cargoes. The incoming Minister of Transportation must also build more trailer parks, holding bays and ensure that the cost of doing business at the ports is reduced drastically so as to attract cargoes to the ports.
Speaking in an interview with Daily Sun, the Chairman, Shippers Association of Lagos State, Mr. Jonathan Nicole, said the maritime sector is reckoned as second highest revenue generator for Nigeria apart from oil and gas, and so stakeholders are expecting that the incoming Minister must look at people using the facilities and not the people providing the facilities because without the users, the facilities will not be of any use.
According to him, the users are the shippers, the importers and the exporters, and that government should focus its attention on the users of port facilities in order to enhance employment, revenue for government and users while also evolving institutions that will endure with time.
He added: There are many regulators in the system and this has to be curtailed. There are too many maritime laws that are not effective. We are looking at the maritime order whereby prices can be controlled equitably and comparatively with other countries and we are looking at the terrain where you can easily bring in goods, make a turn around and go back and become a major contributor to the economy of this country.
“At the moment, government is focusing too many attention on the providers of these facilities, and that is dangerous because it is the reason why a lot of users (importers and importers) are now leaving our country for other countries to develop them and I expect that government should give users more facilities than what other countries are offering to us. So if we abandoned our own people and other countries do not abandon them of course, we move to those locations to do our trade there.
The port should be on trade facilitation, change of government regulations and reduction of bottlenecks.”
He said there should be reduction in the cost of doing business while Customs tariff should be reduced to the barest minimum, adding that it is only when you have more goods that you have more money. He said it not the few goods that come in that you have to capitalised on and take everything from the importers.”
According to him the incoming Minister should look critically at those who set up the ports in the early 50s and take care of them, saying that the Minister should give shippers the protection and encouragement they deserve in the country.
Meanwhile, a frontline maritime expert and National President of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licenced Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Lucky Amiwero said: “The maritime industry is a technical industry not a political organisation. “But what we noticed in the last four years, is that there was no robust technical personality in the forefront of the maritime sector. If you pitch them one by one, you notice that the whole sector was a failure.
“Let us start from the ports. When you look at the concentration of Lagos ports, by the provisions of Nigerian Port Authority’s Act, the Minister of Transport is suppose to make the port a viable place for operations. By the provisions of section 32, the Act actually gave the power to maintain, control and manage the port access roads to the Minister . Therefor it is not the Federal Government but the Minister of Transport and the Port Authority. He said for years, there has been no change as the Ministers of Transport was not complying with the provisions of the Act and that is where Nigeria have a lot of problems in the port and Lagos ports alone contribute almost 80 per cent of the non-oil sector in terms of revenue.
