By Steve Agbota
The Senior Staff Association of Statutory Corporations and Government Owned Companies (SSASCGOC) has urged the federal government to immediately blacklist underperforming terminal operators at the nation’s seaports by not renewing their concession license agreements.
President of SSASCGOC, maritime branch, Akin Bodunde, made the plea at the weekend while addressing journalists on the delay in the renewal of the port concession licenses of terminal operators, saying some of the operators have not performed optimally.
“I don’t want to mention their names, but the Nigerian Ports Authority management knows them, and I know the power behind all of them. But we know the ones that are performing.
“There are a lot of political issues attached to it, and I know the government is looking at it, because if you know Nigeria, the people behind these concessionaires are not just people you can push away overnight.
“But I know there are a lot of committees set up to look at their activities and performance. If they use that yardstick, automatically we should be able to remove the bad ones and work with the good ones.
“When you go to Lekki Port, when you see the facilities there, you can’t compare them with Apapa. And when you go to PTML, you can’t compare it with our old port like the one at Tin Can, which was built in 1976,” he explained.
Bodunde also criticised the port concession for failing to create substantial direct employment despite the initial promise of generating about 500,000 jobs.
He claimed that the total number of direct employees on the payroll of all terminal operators nationwide is less than 2,000, excluding dockworkers employed by separate companies.
Speaking on employment and staff strength within the NPA, Bodunde said there have been regular recruitments since 2013, with new hires in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2023.
However, he explained that the apparent reduction in staff numbers is due to internal career progression.
“There was recruitment in 2013, there was one in 2016, there was one in 2018, there was employment in 2020 and also in 2023.
But the issue is this: if you employ somebody as a staff member, in the next five years, he will become an officer. Nobody wants to remain in a particular place for too long. Even some of the people they employ as staff already have Ordinary National Diplomas (OND).
“And when you have OND, you go for a Higher National Diploma; in the next three years, you are through. The next thing, you apply for upgrading, and NPA will promote you. That’s why the number of staff is reducing—because people want to move to the officer cadre.
“The last employment exercise, they employed about 250 or thereabouts. But today, the majority of them are officers. It’s not that NPA is not employing, it’s just that people have to advance in their careers,” he said.
Bodunde suggested that the NPA might consider a system of severance packages, similar to those in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and NIMASA, to manage the staff structure more efficiently and reduce the burden of a top-heavy workforce.
He said that the NPA promotion policy is currently under review for potential amendments.
“The top is still heavy, and there is a need for more junior officers because people are moving. The only thing is, if NPA has a system of easing them out by making provision for other allowances—as is done in CBN and as happened in NIMASA some years ago—such that when you get to the level you want to go, they give you a severance package. If management does that, maybe it will reduce the load because the top is heavy.
And that is why we are looking at the promotion policy to see how we can re-amend it,” he said.