Last weekend, industry stakeholders, gathered in their numbers for the fourth edition of the Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime (TAAM) Conference held in Lagos with the theme, ‘Innovations and Practical Reforms towards Sustainable Growth in the Maritime Sector.’ Speakers also took turns to list the urgent reforms which managers of the nation’s economy must embark on to drive growth in the nation’s maritime industry vis-à-vis the ports, writes AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE.
With over 217,313 kilometers of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Nigerian maritime sector has huge untapped potentials, which cannot be allowed to remain undeveloped.
Research has shown that Nigeria has natural endowments including crude oil and other mineral resources that generate over 100 million metric tonnes (MMT) of cargoes annually. As a result, over 5,000 vessels call at Nigerian harbours yearly with about 50,000 seafarers but less than 10 percent of this number, are Nigerians.
With this volume, experts strongly believe that shipping automatically has become one of the most lucrative businesses that can generate massive employment and create wealth for Nigerians.
Sadly, just less than 7 percent of this annual volume is being carried by vessels owned by Nigerians, showing that over 90 percent of the volumes are carried by foreign-owned ships.
Owing to these shortcomings and other challenges facing the nation’s maritime business, stakeholders at TAAM conference argued that for Nigerian maritime sector to witness exponential growth, drivers of nation’s economy must aim at promoting sustainable policies.
Taiwo Afolabi, group executive vice chairman of SIFAX Group, who stated that the nation’s maritime industry has several policies including Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act, truck standardisation policy and others that have catapulted the industry to the next level, said that more reforms and policies as well as strong implementation of existing once are needed for sustainable growth.
For instance, the Rail Modernisation Policy of the Federal Government, which aims at linking some ports to the national rail network such that cargoes can be evacuated from Apapa port to the hinterland, has been described as a much needed policy that must be fully implemented.
But, according to Afolabi, who believed that effective use of rail for cargo evacuation is crucial to efficient port system, the Federal Government needs to ensure that all Nigerian ports are linked to the standard gauge in order to spur the expected growth in the sector.
“For our sector to grow, strict security measures must be put in place both onshore and offshore. There have been various instances of piracy, attacks on ships and various terminals by men of the underworld. This has led many shipping lines to introduce war-rick surcharges on consignments heading to Nigeria,” he said.
Afolabi described Nigerian Port Reform Policy, which brought private sector into port operations as one of the successful policies judging by the shorter turnaround time of vessels and shorter cargo dwell time at our ports today and other benefits of port concession.
He however, appealed to the government and its agencies to further fortify the nation’s coastal areas and maritime boundaries against maritime crimes. He added that attacks on ships at berth, anchorage or off the coast can effectively be tackled with the right approach.
He called for strong implementation and feedback mechanism as well as opportunity for the initiators of reforms to be allowed to conclude the processes.
In his keynote speech, Hassan Bello, executive secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NCS), said infrastructural reform is very important to making transport system very efficient.
According to him, government must take the responsibility of providing infrastructure such as good roads, linkage of rail to the ports.
“We have to regulate the carriage of goods by land which means there must be liability, insurance, responsibility of the owners of the transport and carriage. In the freight forwarding practice we have called for consolidation, professionalism, reforms in the trucking system, and the haulage system,” he said.
On her part, Vicky Haastrup, managing director of ENL Consortium, said the port cannot be reformed if Nigeria does not have an enabling law in place.
“We need the National Transport Commission Bill (NTCB) to be passed to bring reforms and necessary innovations that the nation’s maritime industry needs at this critical time,” she said.
According to her, government should see to it that NTCB is passed into law because it will moderate the way business is done at the ports as well as the responsibilities of all players including government agencies, service providers and port users.
Other stakeholders, who took turns to give suggestions on reforms that would enthrone sustainable growth in the maritime sector, called for more indigenous participation in the nation’s shipping business as a way to creating both wealth and employment opportunities for the youths.
Haastrup, who said Nigeria needs participation in shipping business through vessel ownership, called for an enabling law that would support ship acquisition.
According to her, the nation’s maritime sector has a lot of foreigners, who come to Nigeria to invest in shipping business and such investors get high patronage from International Oil Companies (IOCs) because Nigerian policies and laws do not support the growth of indigenous ships.
“Government needs to use laws to force IOCs to support and patronise local ship owners in order to encourage indigenous participation. Ship acquisition does not come cheap, which means that investors borrow from banks to acquire such vessels,” she said.
Adetola Bucknor, a maritime lawyer and partner Paul Usoro & Co, who stated that Nigeria has existing laws like Coastal and Inland Shipping Act (Cabotage) designed to encourage indigenous participation in shipping, blamed weak implementation for the failure of those laws.
“For instance, foreigners take advantage of the waiver clause in the Cabotage Act to dominate the Cabotage trade that originally should belong to local ship owners. Therefore, government needs regular consultation with industry stakeholders to find solutions to the limitations,” she suggested.
Bucknor, who noted that there is need to consider setting up Maritime Development Bank to address issues around funding gap in ship acquisition, urged members of ship owners associations to consider becoming pressure groups that would ensure that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporations (NNPC) puts its foot on ground to bring Nigerians onboard crude oil lifting business.
Kunle Folarin, another panelist, who opined that government has the responsibility of creating employment, empowerment and wealth for its citizens, decried that 16 years after the enactment of Cabotage Act, nothing has happened.
He suggested that Nigeria needs to consider several other models like public private partnership used in other parts of the world to grow her shipping business.
“We need to sit back and reason again. In my view, if government does not want to invest in the sector, it is okay because it is said that government has no business in business, but we must have a caveat that says that Nigerians must be allowed to even monopolise the sector,” he suggested.
Rollens Mccoy, executive director, Oceandeep Services, a panelist, who stated that time has come for government to create employment for over 70 percent of Nigerians youths through the effective implementation of Cabotage Act, said that IOCs should be given a mandate to create certain quota for Nigerian owned ships.
She believed that such would create opportunity for Nigerian graduates and seafarers to be gainfully employed in the nation’s maritime sector.
“Nigeria has laws but the challenge is that our laws are always designed to fail rather than achieve their purpose. This is because we mostly give room for political considerations in every good law,” Olayiwola Shittu, former national president of Association Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), said.
Shittu, who was also a panelist, said that the waiver clause in the Cabotage Act was only created to satisfy the political office holders. He added that Nigeria lacks the political will to make things work in the maritime industry.
