By Steve Agbota, [email protected]
Policy inconsistency, shoddy implementation, and instability had among other factors combined to impede the actualisation of the huge potential of Nigeria’s maritime sector in 2020.
This had contributed to the sector’s poor performance in 2020 with indications evidently pointing to the negative zone. These challenges had stunted the growth of the sector and impacted the industry adversely in 2020.
Just like every year, lack of enforcement of maritime related policies posed a huge setback for the nation’s maritime sector, in addition to myriads of other factors including poor seaport access roads, lack of holding bay, quay, absence of truck parks and ineffective traffic management around the ports, especially within the country’s two busiest ports in Lagos.
Similarly, the multiplicity of Customs units and extortion of importers by security agents also contributed to the downside of narratives that constrained trade facilitation in Nigeria.
Asides, the known factors impeding the development of the industry, the emergence of COVID-19, which crippled almost economy of the world also dampened the nation’s maritime sector growth in the year under review. At the peak of the pandemic, vessels from high risk nations were placed under restrictions and cargo throughput declined tremendously at the ports. Also due to the lockdown, the Nigerian Shippers lost over N15 trillion to the pandemic, while most clearing agents could not do their clearing business.
In the same vein, the recent #EndSARS protests crippled all business activities across the nation’s seaports following the 24 hours curfew imposed by the Lagos State and other state governments across the country to curb the situation.
It was at the same time that the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) headquarters was attacked and set ablaze along over 27 vehicles by hoodlums.
A cursory assessment of the damage showed that it would cost over N1 billion to fix loss suffered by the Authority.
During the EndSARS protests, the Apapa and Tin Can Island commands of the Nigeria Customs Service said they lost about N18 billion to the protests and three days curfew imposed in Lagos State that paralysed port economic activities.
But stakeholders in the nation’s maritime sector have accused Federal Government of not paying enough attention to the sector despite its huge potential.
They argued that the Federal Government was only after the revenue coming from the industry but has consistently failed to fix the obsolete infrastructure in the industry.
Speaking with Daily Sun, the National Vice President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Kayode Farinto, said that 2020 was a bad year for everybody, import sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the unseriousness of the Federal government, which deliberately abandoned the nation’s various infrastructure to decay at the port even though it continues to expect so much.
He said, “if the government has been serious, the negative impact of COVID-19 wouldn’t have been strong, if they have invested in terms of structures and equipments in the maritime sector. He said the year 2020 for the maritime sector was zero as there was no capacity building ading that the government was only interested in the revenue even as it failed to curb the excesses of the Nigerian Customs Service. He said there were situations where Customs will release and rearrest an impoter, which stands as an indictment on the department and the Nigerian government itself.
According to him, the role of the economic regulator given to Nigerian Shippers’ Council has not been successful because the Council can only bark but cannot bite.
“Most terminal operators are not answerable to NPA, in view of the fact that NPA has not even done its responsibility in the area of concessioning agreement. In the concessioning agreement, it was agreed that NPA or Federal Government would be providing 24 hours electricity, but this has not been done,” he said.
He said the various terminal operators have been running their terminals on diesel engine and generators.
Meanwhile, a former member of Presidential Taskforce on the Reform of Nigeria Customs Service; Presidential Committee on Destination Inspection and Ministerial Committee on Fiscal Policy and Import Clearance Procedure, Lucky Amiwero, said the Nigerian maritime sector is poorly managed, warning that unless the port was reformed and run by experts, the whole system will collapse.
He said: “Cargoes are often left in the port for one year and nobody cares. Customs can hold a cargo for the next six months, nobody cares. Nobody runs a country like that. No procedure, nothing and you are looking for revenue.
“When your system is efficiently run, transparently operated and consistently managed, it brings out the best. There is no cordination, nobody is in charge and everybody do what they likes in the industry.”
He said that there is nothing to assess in the sector when the country is bedeviled with gridlock where people cannot come into the port to move their cargoes. Many people spend four days in the port paying highest dumerage, rent and costs to run their businesses in the port.
“Importers are at the mercy of truckers, Customs, terminal operators and nobody cordinates the economy. You have people that are running across opposite, confused set of people running the industry whereby you have the highest when it comes to cost in the whole world. Nigeria’s trading across border is highly duplicated.
“We are not consistent, we are not transparent. We don’t do anything that brings about the progress in the country. The whole port is not cordinated and there is no minister cordinating the place. The minister of finance is doing her own, the minister of transport is doing his own and the minister of trade is doing his own. And all these ministries are supposed to be cordinated. We operate one of the most expensive ports in the world.
“Nigerian port is a port you cannot predict, a port that is not consistent and not transparent which are the key components of trade facilitation. I don’t know what we are going to find in African Continental Free Trade Agreement. When it comes to that time, we will have problems because our infrastructure have decayed, our procedures are not done according to international best practice. We don’t obey laws, we do things according to what pleases us” he said.
Farinto said unfortunately, one of the key things the government ought to do is to fix the roads leading to the ports, which they have been paying lip service to.
“The other one that is very germain is the role of the various parastatals and the likes. The issue of the high hardedness from the Chief Executive Officers. We have a situation where 75 per cent of the access road has been completed, which is supposed to ease the various challenges and traffic gridlock we have in the port.
“But the road is being blocked by the Federal Ministry of Works and there is no coersion, no inter-relationship between the Federal Ministry of Works, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the various stakeholders in the maritime industry. And these are causing negative effects on our maritime industry.
According to him, government must be serious.