By Uzor Odigbo
Maritime expert, Mr. Lucky Antwero has blamed poor organization and low capacity development for slow pace of maritime industry growth making Nigerian ports less competitive.
Speaking in Lagos on Wednesday, Amiwero who is also President of National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), said over 9000 jobs have been lost in the industry.
He listed low draft, poor port infrastructure, lack of proper operating system and politicisation of key maritime positions that should have been held by experts as causes of declining fortunes.
He also blamed the government for it’s much emphasis on revenue collection without making the port environment business friendly to attract investments and generate employments that will grow the economy.
According to him, Nigeria’s highest depth of 13 meters is not deep enough to accommodate bigger vessels with 18,000 TEUs while smaller neighbouring countries like Cameroun, Togo and Benin Republic have ports with depth of 16 meters .
This has threatened Nigeria’s quest for a regional hub port status as the smaller countries with lesser cargo throughput are taking away almost all benefits Nigerian citizens should enjoy, according to him.
He added that aside the freight components being lost, the trans-shipment of cargoes from a port owner country to land-locked neighbours is being enjoyed by other countries while Nigeria is losing out.
He described the lack of functional scanners at the ports as a serious setback capable of exposing the country to risk of arms smuggling under the destination inspection regime.
On the deplorable state of ports access roads in the country, according to the Journal magazine, Amiwero blamed the Federal Government for poor response to the challenge, which according to him, has resulted to loss of human lives and damage to import and export consignments.
“The roads are so bad that you can’t predict when you access the ports. You can’t even say when your cargo can exit the port.
“This is a neglected function of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) under Section 32A of its act. It has responsibility of working on port access roads, dredging of channels leading to the ports and fairway buoy.
“But what we have today, is that they are deviating from their core functions to pursue revenue collection. ”
On government drive for Ease of Doing Business in the port, he rated government performance as very low and decried Nigeria’s position as number 184 among 190 countries on trading across borders.