By Chukwudi Nweje
Assistant Editor
Maritime will become an alternative revenue earner only if the productive sectors are developed, says former Managing Director of the Nigerian Shippers Council and President of the Union of African Shippers Council (UASC), Kingsley Usoh.
He disagreed with the argument that the sector can generate more revenue in the face of dwindling oil receipts without production.
“Transport in general is a carrying trade. The economy has to produce before you start transporting. Those talking about maritime serving as an alternative revenue earner to crude oil are just joining the bandwagon.
“Maritime will help if those things that need transportation are developed,” he explained.
Usoh – who holds a master’s degree in transportation engineering and operations from the University of Newcastle and a doctorate in maritime transport technology and administration from Federal University of Technology (FUTO), Owerri – blamed the colonial structure which farmed Nigeria for cash crops processed in factories in Europe.
“They planted the crops here to get the products, harvested here and then shipped the crops to Europe for the factories to work on them and the factories would employ their own people.
“The people they employed would help raise Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of their own country. The colonial masters only used Nigeria as a feeder service.
“Maritime will only yield revenue if there is industrialisation. The people who talk about maritime yielding revenue do not consider these things. Unless Nigeria industrialises, we will only feed their factories and will continue to have unemployment.”
He urged the federal government to reposition the universities to adapt home grown technologies to produce semi-manufactured goods “from the nation’s mineral resources and from the harvests we have.
“If we follow the argument to continue to produce and produce, it will not help us. Go to the markets and see how much of tomatoes we waste.
“We do not even have enough storage facilities to store our excess produce. What we waste in Nigeria can feed the country for two years.”
Usoh also decried the rot in the maritime sector blaming it on people from all sorts of backgrounds who parade themselves as clearing and forwarding agents.
He described clearing and forwarding as a skilled discipline that requires proper training before the practitioners venture into it.
He has published several books, including The Politics of Shipping and the Nigerian Economy (1994) and Freight Charges in West Central African Liner Conference Trade (2004), in which he discussed problems in the maritime sector and how to solve them.