The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has blamed the problems facing the Nigerian maritime industry on the inability of the Federal government to play its own r part of the bargain as contained in the concession agreement.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, the National President of ANLCA, Prince Olayiwola Shittu observed that the concessionaires were yet to hit the ground rolling six years after the ports were concessioned because the government reneged in its responsibility.
Shittu added that if the concessionaires had be given adequate support and that if the government had monitored their level of investment, a lot of progress would have been made in the industry.
According to him,” that was why we highlighted Chief Sarumi. There are things he did not do, if the concessioning had been tied to government responsibility, our government is forced to do that responsibility, we won’t have the problems we have today”.
“When we do concessioning based on political considerations, it is always like that because if the ports were balkanized, you had some stories about how the ports developed, how they wanted to make it small small mushroom companies for political interests:”.
“None of the terminals have direct access to the main road, all of them must use one common user access and that one is supposed to be taken care of by the government including water, including giving them energy but the government have not done any on their own part”.
“Some, how clever were the terminals to be able to swim against that tide? Rather than bring their investments from abroad, they decided to charge us to pay and accumulate the funds to do what they are doing, that was why it took them up to six years for them to get appreciable machinery into the terminals because necessity they say is the mother of invention”.
“If they had been given their adequate support and the government had monitored their level of investment, we won’t be having what we are having today”.
He faulted the trend in Nigeria whee investors were made to come in with nothing only to bill Nigerians to raise money for the necessary facilities to carry out their duties as contained in the contractual agreement as against what obtained in other climes where the reverse is the case.
The ANLCA boss further faulted the haste with which the federal government was implementing the new automotive policy in the country arguing that such a policy was not something to be rushed into rather it was a policy that needed to be carefully implemented if the gains therein must be harnessed.
He disclosed that the association and other stakeholders in the industry had suggested to the Federal government through the Nigeria Customs Service to draw up a plan to phase out used vehicles in the country within a five year period.
He said that within the said period, manufacturing plants would be set up to be manufacturing components of vehicles which would not be less than two thousand adding that when the country can boast of two thousand different companies producing different parts of the vehicles, it would then translate to more employment opportunities for Nigerians.
“But you are asking people who are benefiting, who are going to bring in CKDs, vehicle parts manufactured by other economies and come and assemble here and you are telling us that you are going to generate seven hundred thousand jobs. It is not possible!
“The total workers in a car manufacturing company in America is not up to two thousand, so, how can Nigeria get up to seven hundred thousand? Who is deceiving who?”
“The bottom line is that we will continue to have our say, they have their way but the same thing that happened to rice policy that made them do a Volta-face will happen over this car industry”, he said.
