…Continued from the last edition
Rev. Dr. Alex Favour Okwuashi is the Rector, Certified Institute of Shipping, Nigeria. In this interview with our correspondent, he bares his mind on the shipping sector in the last six months, the Nigeria Maritime University infrastructure deficit in the maritime industry and many more. Excerpts;
It appeared that the awareness of the shipping sector is growing by the day as against what it used to be about a decade or two ago. What would you attribute the rise in the awareness and the interest the sector is generating in young Nigerians to?
It may not be true that in the past two decades, we are only talking about twenty years ago, that the information or detailed knowledge of shipping was not there. It was there, I think the problem is having a functional maritime administration and a functional maritime administration is supposed to do a lot of things like NIMASA and other maritime administration is doing.
Let me clear the air, when we talk about the Maritime administration, it is an inter-agency cooperation, it is not one institution. Though NIMASA in Nigeria may be the apex maritime administration but it is not the only maritime administration.
Before the establishment of NIMASA, the Nigerian Ports Authority played all the roles that NIMASA is playing today before the establishment of NIMASA. We had also the General Directorate of Shipping (GIS), we had JOMLIC, we had other agencies even the Nigerian National Shipping Line when there was NMA talk less of NIMASA. It was the merger of NMA and JOMLIC that led to NIMASA.
So, before 2007, this agency was set up, we had issues of maritime administration. It was because of the problems associated with what you may call unstable regime in maritime administration in Nigeria that led to the impasse , this problem of lack of domain awareness because, there was so much rate of altrusion, people left the maritime industry, the maritime administration itself was not consistent, they sack the leadership every time, there was no respect for the continuity of policies and even as I speak to you today, we do not have a National Maritime Policy, we don’t, in other words, where would the Nigerian Maritime industry be in the next five or ten years? We don’t have just as we do not have the National Transport Policy now. It cannot work.
So, it is in the National transport Policy that you are going to have the National maritime objectives from where you now know what is our scope looking at the next five years, ten years or even fifteen years and we work towards that.
So, a lot of people felt that the industry was unsafe and in a popular way we used to describe it, we say, despite several years of maritime activities, the maritime industry is still at its nursery stage. There are lots of potentials but they still remained untapped, then it is still at nursery after about over fifty years of independence.
We are looking at a situation where there will be a functional maritime administration and with the responsibility of coming up with the national Maritime Objectives and these objectives should be followed. We need to develop our infrastructure, maritime infrastructure is the problem but we need to develop it. The port must expand and this issue of Manpower training is very important.
I believe strongly that with the NIMASA institution coming on board and the way I prayed that MAN Oron should be integrated as a faculty of that University or as a school of that University, like the Nigerian College of maritime Studies Oron, you don’t need to duplicate effort to set up another University in Oron, that can be Nigerian Maritime University Oron Campus.
And they can now train nautical engineers because that is the core they have and other engineering, management courses can go to other areas. Infact, we can even have a multi-campus university which is what it was supposed to be.
I have told those people that has been crying from Oron, we have been sabotaged, I said no, for me, it is going to be a strategic plan, let there be an integration of the system and all that. It is when we get this point that people will now begin to work for the nation.
The problem with maritime administration in Nigeria is the struggle for jurisdiction. It is the battle for jurisdiction. NIMASA wants to do everything or those who pushed for NIMASA’s programme, they want to do everything. It is not possible.
We can have forty maritime agencies, all of them can still work together but for you to put the control of every maritime activities under one agency to multi-task that agency, it will crumble, it will fail.
If they don’t want NIMASA to fail, I have been saying this as a professional, I know what I am talking about, as a manager, let them stop loading NIMASA with responsibility. This establishment of late of the Nigerian Maritime University should not be NIMASA’s concern. It don’t have to become, now NIMASA is funding Oron, it is going to own its own University, Why? It is going to fund the National Shipping line, it cannot! Where is the fund going to come from?
Are you suggesting that NIMASA should be unbundled?
The university can be floated by the Federal Government and let it fund itself after all, we have private institutions. You can even make a Consortium of, what is wrong, you have CIS, NIMASA should pay a visit here and see whether this place cannot pass for a University. What is wrong with NIMASA entering into a Memorandum of Understanding and say CIS, we see that you are the first shipping institution to commence a Master’s Degree programme in shipping, please run shipping management for us.Then we can have an MoU with them, we run shipping management.
They can go to Oron and say, you take care of Nautical, Oceanography, you take care of Fishery because we need to develop strategic infrastructure for this sector to grow.
But I don’t see how NIMASA will be able to run a University with all the faculties and fund Oron. Very soon, they will dump Oron if they fail to integrate it as part of the University. So, let us first of all do the right thing. Those who are preparing these papers and clamouring to make NIMASA bigger than what it should be will soon leave and become irrelevant in the system and the load they have put on that agency will destroy it.
It was said that the Nigerian Maritime University and the proposed National Shipping Line are to be run under the Public Private Partnership (PPP). Is that not a way of offloading most of the loads already weighing on the agency as you suggested?
Automatically, NIMASA will become a landlord like NPA. It won’t work because, when you do it that way, NIMASA will be doing that and also be existing as a regulatory agency. You cannot be an umpire in the match that you are playing, it is not possible. You cannot use two legs to kick. With which one would you use to stand?
A regulator is a regulator. NIMASA is by the reason of the Act, they are making sufficient fund. They can pull shipping interests together and form a consortium to develop these infrastructure. I know the biggest constraint individual organization have is funding and if NIMASA is now syndicating it, how is it going to call them together to be, because if you talk of partnership, you talk about equity participation, everybody must contribute something into something. Tomorrow now, you will see them give the opportunity to one hair dressing saloon, one catering company whereas there are training institutions. If there should be anybody to partner, it must be the existing institutions who already have what it takes, the infrastructure to support the project.
We are not exaggerating it , if you come to CIS for example or go to the Federal College of Fishing or go to MAN Oron,these people have infrastructure on ground, all you need to do is which department can we locate there and let them function?
But when you take on everything, you have to talk of funding, funding of education is not easy and you don’t have top burn all your hand. And how would they be regulating shipping and still talk about safety. What it means is that NIMASA is already going into business now.
There were indications that a lot of Politics came into play in choosing to site the Nigerian Maritime University on a virgin land rather than on an existing facility at Oron. Do you share the same opinion?
There is nothing you can do these days especially under the political dispensation that is not politics after all, before the establishment of the Nigerian Maritime University, there was clamour to upgrade Oron to University. Why did they drop the proposal and now establish a brand new institution? That is where you see people complain about.
And again, there is nothing wrong in establishing four Maritime Universities. Nigeria is a very large country with very large coast land. Yes, you can put them in different zones. Oron is already there, you can put one in Lagos, can’t Lagos have a Maritime University? Why can’t Port-Harcourt or Warri area have a Maritime university? Why can’t Oron or Calabar have a maritime university? You can even put one in Abuja, it does not matter, you can put one in each Geo-political zone, it doesn’t matter.
The important thing is that there is an existing institution. All the Universities are existing, government can establish, for me, instead of building and wasting those resources, government can establish Maritime Chairs in all the Universities or in zonal universities. For example, NIMASA had a plan for it, I don’t know why they suddenly changed their minds. You can go to each Geo-political zone and establish Department of Maritime Studies. In that department, you fund it, it is no longer going to be as expensive as the one you are going to sink in a virgin land.
How do you look at the shipping sector in the country in the first half of this year?
Well, a lot of things are really evolving. The aspect of the international shipping that I will like to mention in this case is that we have to leverage on the fact that the GDP of this country is now top in Africa. Then see how we can develop our shipping further especially by participation.
You see, until you have a National carrier, you cannot participate in so many trade. The shipping market, we have the tanker business, we have the if you like, call them the dry cargo trade, we have the fish, the wet, other aspect of it. We have not been participating in all these because we do not have these vessels.
Procurement of these vessels are very expensive, 60 million to 90 million depending on the type of ship you are talking about and a single bank in Nigeria cannot support or facilitate this loan just because they are risk averse. But the Federal government can help to bring back the glory of the memory of these line.
We can divide or spread our risks into something like tanker operations, into dry cargo even into RORO operation because you know that all the vessels that bring cars into Nigeria, We don’t participate in the shipment of a single one and so we are loosing money.
If the federal government can get involved, play the international politics involved and restore the era of lines,it will be possible for the shipping industry to grow and from that, the issue of taxing, those tariff that discourage people from getting into shipping should also be looked into so that a lot of people will participate.
Loans should be available from banks, banks should be educated and said look, the fact that you give loan to the shipping sector does not mean that your money is sinking. They should know that there is a lot of opportunity in that area.
All these will be done by the Maritime administration. They must educate the public, do something and advocate for patronage so that a lot of people will participate in shipping thereby moving our welfare up.
