By Tony Nzekwe
The newly launched Nigeria Port Process Manual (NPPM); was conceptualised to promote transparency, accountability, predictability and eradicate corruption in the port system, this is not the first time we are having laudable concepts on paper on how best to harvest benefits from our ports.
This was the asssertion of Hon Tony Iju Nwabunike, National President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, in a statement and made available to GLOBAL RAYS Media.
He added, “My about three decades of operation and full time presence in our maritime environment confirms that we have ideas, know the good things to do to become great but allow narrow minded interests and in some cases, corruption to reign over our good intentions.”
He continued, “This has had its toll on the safety of crew, cargoes and vessels transiting within and around our maritime domain thereby entrenching a controversial identity of a viable maritime country with unsafe waters on us.”
“Crew members of some foreign flagged waters sailing through the Gulf of Guinea and in some cases Nigerian waters have either been kidnapped or killed during attacks on vessels.”
Nwabunike reiterated that, “These incidents, which threatens commercial shipping activities on our waters have earned us a badge of notoriety among our peer maritime nations which we must seek lasting solutions to, as a matter of urgency.
He posited that, “Commercial shipping and the entire maritime industry has become a fulcrum on which the nation’s prospects for economic sustainability rests.”
Adding, “While many describe our maritime industry as second to oil, I see it as embedded in the oil and gas industry because oil activities only thrive in a safe and enduring maritime sector.”
“Even the much talked about agricultural business expansion can only earn foreign exchange through export when shipping of farm produce and commodities happen from maritime activities.”
He recall, “You cannot transport crude oil or ship in refined products without the use of vessels traveling on water and using ports, jetties or anchorage areas for berthing or resting on transit.”
“It is therefore apt to conclude that amount of security provided for this critical sector is too much.”
Nwabunike lamented, “The causes of maritime insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea are multiple and multilayered, and they are manifest in violence, corruption, and in communities that resort to any means available to improve their circumstances—even if through illegal trade, insurgency, or piracy.”
“It is worrisome that the GoG where Nigeria holds a great stake, accounts for 95 percent of maritime kidnappings in the world.”
Proximate and adjoining maritime states in the Gulf of Guinea includes Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon , Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola.
Nwabunike submitted, “If the Nigerian Port Process Manual (NPPM) must be seen as a document of high value beyond the paper on which it was printed, it’s initiators and drivers must continually practice an all inclusive implementation mode devoid of personal ego or one government organisation trying to assert superiority over the other.”
Adding, “Since the manual itself and the ports economic regulator ( Nigerian Shippers Council) that is to implement it are not backed by any law, except by executive fiat, it is important that it’s provisions are not in conflict with any extant law governing our maritime activities.”
He charged, “The process of making Nigerian Shippers Council a stronger economic regulator by an Act of the National Assembly should be activated and expedited.”
Adding, “In tackling insecurity, government should deliberately engage youths of coastal communities close to the Gulf of Guinea in fighting maritime crimes in a manner similar to the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) it is presently deploying in fighting insurgency and terrorism in the North East part of the country.”
He opined, “Interventionist organisations such as Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Presidential Amnesty Office and other similar bodies could be contracted as first line of communication with the youths to make piracy, sea robberies, kidnapping of crew members and attack on ships less attractive and difficult to carry out as indigent youths will be enlisted into the fight against these maritime crimes.”
However, he lauded the recently announced intervention by the European Union to help secure the GoG, Nigera should take the lead among Gulf of Guinea Commission countries in getting them to replicate our Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offences (SPOMO) Act and enlist non government actors in the quest for orderliness in the area.
