The Executive Secretary/CEO of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Honourable Emmanuel Jime has blamed the current enabling laws of the agency for its inability to regulate charges in the Nigerian shipping sector.
In a message to the Nigerian Tribune over absence of the Shippers Council in Nigeria’s offshore shipping sector, the NSC Executive Secretary explained that it is due to issues like this that the agency, under him, is pushing for the amendment of the agency’s enabling laws.
According to Honourable Emmanuel Jime, “Thanks for drawing my attention. These are some of the reasons I am pushing to amend our law.
“As things stand now, this matter is not in our purview and there is a gap. Our new law, once passed will enable us to better regulate this sector.”
Recall that offshore operators in Nigeria’s shipping sector recently rued the absence of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) in the regulation of charges in the sub-sector.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune in an exclusive interview, President of the Maritime Security Providers Association of Nigeria (MASPAN), Emmanuel Maiguwa explained that the operators who were worried by the irregularities in pricing regime, had to agree that prevailing rates be increased by $1,500 Dollars.
According to the MASPAN President, “Due to irregularities in the pricing regime in Nigeria’s offshore operations, what we have done in the interim is to agree on a resolution that the rate that has been prevalent in the last two to three months be increased by 1,500 Dollars.
“We were facing a situation where most of the vessels moving about were not 100 percent safe due to irregularities in the pricing regime of the offshore shipping business. Vessel owners were cutting corners to secure jobs and it was threatening safety standards of their vessels.
“The new resolution on an increment by a $1,500 Dollars came into force on February 14th, 2023. The idea is just to save the situation before we run into danger while we sit down together and come up with a market model that does not add cost unnecessarily on our hipping practice and at the same-time addresses the safety issues.
“We anticipated that there might be some push from the same actors (foreign partners) who have always worked on winning business by driving down cost, so MASPAN has been recognizing those who are massively in support of the new resolution on pricing.
“But I can tell you that there is about 95 percent acceptance to this new resolution by the foreign partners that do business in Nigeria’s offshore domain. They have agreed that the rates are terrible and poor.
“However, we are not ruling out few elements who will still want to drive down cost in-order to win business at the expense of safety.”
