The Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) has warned the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) that port concession review is bound to fail without its involvement.
The Executive Secretary of NSC, Hassan Bello, who gave the warning on the sideline of the Sub Regional Workshop and Joint Standing Commitee Meeting of the Union of African Shippers’ Council (UASC) hosted by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council in Abuja recently, said there may not be a meaningful port concession review without involvement of all the port regulators.
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala-Usman, at the International Asssociation of Ports and Harbour (IAPH) two weeks ago hinted that the review of the concession agreements would be ready in three months.
She added: “It will be ready in the next three months. We are talking with the terminal operators. We have an inter-agency committee which has all the agencies of government that are part of the concessioning process (office of the Attorney General, Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Federal Ministry of Transportation, NPA and we also have technical support from the World Bank.
According to her, there is a review of port concession, which is going on but for now, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council is not participating and Nigerian Shippers Council is a representative of so many things.
He explained: “You cannot  have a meaningful port concession agreements without the Nigerian Shippers Council. So I am aware that the federal ministry of Transportation is looking at this because one have to take the interest of all users because this is what happened in the first instance when the negotiations of the port concessioning was inclusive, we were not involved and we should operate an open society.”