The Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) recently witnessed a change of guard as Mr Pius Ukeyima Akutah took over the reins of leadership of the agency from Emmanuel Jime. In this interview with TOLA ADENUBI, the new Executive Secretary/Ceo rolled out his plans for Nigeria’s dry ports. Excerpts:
On the dry ports, apart from Kano, Kaduna and Dala inland dry ports, other dry ports have struggled to pick up, not to talk of commencing operations. What’s happening with these dry ports Sir?
The issues affecting most of the Inland Dry Ports are the same. It bothers me whether the concessionaires have the capacity to develop these inland dry ports at a time these ports were concessioned to them. I doubt whether these concessionaires showed evidence of financial strength to be able to develop these dry ports at the time they were concessioned to them. If you look at majority of what is happening to the inland dry ports that are yet to come on stream, years after being concessioned to investors, you will see that they are all been plagued by financial constraints. I can tell you now that we are set to review those concession agreements to see where we got it wrong, because we cannot continue with that model where we concession an inland dry port to a company, a concessionaire, and there won’t be any development on the inland dry port. Also, we will be reviewing the responsibilities of other parties involved, like the state governments and other agencies of government whose role is to provide certain infrastructures. We cannot have a state government make commitment to offer us land for the development of an inland dry port, having already determined that they have a considerable number of shippers residing within their vicinity for which they want to draw the port closer to them, only for the land to be immersed in issues or not being available at all. The essence of the inland dry ports is to make life easier, especially for export and import business. If we review these arrangements and we are of the view that we need to further strengthen some other aspects of the agreements to ensure that any concessionaire who is coming up with this idea must have given us the feasibility study and also give us the guarantee that it has the resources, and we see the viability of locating an inland dry port within that vicinity, then we will go ahead with the agreement. We cannot continue having projects that seems to be foot-dragging for eternity.
Are you saying after the review, some inland dry ports might get new concessionaires?
I won’t want to say that for now. The essence of the review is not to displace anybody who has an inland dry port already. The essence is that, going forward, we should be able to say that this is a standard agreement. And before we sign the agreement, we have a checklist of what we are looking at in terms of the proposed concessionaire and other stakeholders that are involved. This is to ensure that we have a checklist and that the checklist is satisfactory.
Before you came onboard, the terminal operators pushed for a tariff increment. What’s your take on this?
I have told the terminal operators that I have visited that we are not looking at tariff increment as the best way to drive profit. We are looking at the overall port efficiency that will push trade upward. The more the volume of trade terminal operators engage in, the more profit they will make. It should not be about tariff increment. If we continue to increase tariff, it won’t solve the issue confronting the operators at the ports. If we increase tariff and the other factors involved in port operation are not tackled, it will erode the profits made from tariff increment.
You recently suspended the recruitment exercise embarked upon by your predecessor, Mr Emmanuel Jime, for 45 workers into the NSC. Some of the affected workers have claimed that their suspension is politically motivated. How true is this?
I am even surprised that this is just being talked about in January 2024, because this happened in November 2023 when I assumed office here at the Shippers Council. Is it possible for somebody to resume at a new organisation and sack people that have already been employed legally into the organisation? No, because there are rules governing the organisation in the first place. When I newly arrived here, I met a petition on my table already waiting for me. The petition, which was against the recruitment exercise of the 45 workers, was already on my table before I came into office, waiting for me. So, when I came into office and saw the petition, I called the labour union in the Shippers Council and asked them if there is another way we can settle the issues surrounding the recruitment exercise, because the petition was against the recruitment. So, when I asked the union if there is another way we can handle the issue; the union said No, that the recruitment was not done in line with extant provisions of the Public Service Rules and that they cannot allow the recruitment to stand. So, I began to ask what is the problem. The issue is that there was actually a recruitment process that commenced under my predecessor, but the recruitment process had not come to the point where employment letters ought to have been issued. However, employment letters were issued to the workers after the Executive Secretary/CEO was removed from office. Although the employment letters were dated 10th of October, they were not issued until after 25th of October 2023. All this time, I was not here then, but the union kicked against the recruitment process and said it must be stopped. When I came into office, I actually said we will go on and conclude the recruitment exercise. That we will do it in a manner that is in line with the Public Service Rules. So, we wrote the workers and told them to hold on, that we are gong to review the employment process. Since then, I have refused to speak publicly about this issue since it’s an internal matter which we are trying to resolve. But I was surprised to see that the affected workers have taken this issue to the public space, alleging that I cancelled their employments. The process to review the employment is on, that’s why I didn’t want to speak about this publicly. If you remember, I resumed here on November 1, 2023, and since I resumed, there have been so many activities between Abuja and Lagos. We ought to start the review of that employment in November 2023 but because of my busy schedule, we have not been able to begin the review. I have had to travel countless times between Abuja and Lagos to meet requirements of the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, though it’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s the exigency of the work which I have no other choice but to do.
Are you going to recall all the 45 workers when the employment exercise review begins?
Of course, we are calling everybody back to see how we can go on with the employment exercise in a manner that is supposed to be. We have not sacked the 45 persons involved in the recruitment. Nobody was given a sack letter. What we gave them was a letter telling them to hold on, that there is a review of the employment process. We gave them the letter in December 2023.
