As the year gradually winds up, the Shippers Association of Lagos state (SAL) has called for the extension of one year period given to the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) to five years to enable it achieve its mandate as the Port commercial regulator in Nigeria.
It will be recalled that the Federal government earlier in the year granted the commercial regulator status to the Nigerian Shippers’ Council on the interim for a period of one year to enable it assess the performance of the Council with a view to renewing the status or conferring it on another agency entirely.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen in Lagos recently, the President of SAL, Rev. Dr. Jonathan Nicol opined that the problem in the Nigerian Seaports which had taken about 58 years to create could not be solved in one year thus the need for more time for the Council.
Nicol argued that the government should not be in a hurry in getting the Council to give it result since the Council would not perform any magic to get all the problems that had taken years to accumulate to be solved in just one year.
According to him,” you don’t expect a problem that has been lingering for 58 years to be solved in few weeks, it is not possible. It is not even realistic; five years minimum should have been an ideal thing to give them. Why are we in a hurry? We were not in a hurry when we were creating the problems. You know it is that easy to destroy but to repair it becomes a little difficult”.
He maintained that it was not enough to pronounce the Council as the port commercial regulator without giving them the legal backing to enforce such regulations arguing that without the backing of the law, it could only do nothing more than play an advisory role which it had been doing before now.
“First of all, they don’t have enough fund to prosecute their course which is very salient, they don’t have the enabling laws that was given to them by the government. Was that a deliberate act? We don’t understand. Government should answer these two questions”.
“Yes, the President made an order, appoint them as the commercial regulator because he was fed up with too many complains. What they should have done further was to give them the backing of the law”, Nicol said.
He stated that although the Council had done a lot within the period, a lot more still needed to be done even as he identified three grey areas in the system where the Council had been addressing since assuming function as the port commercial regulator to include the shipping and terminal operators, the Nigeria Customs Service and the roads and the Freight forwarding issues.
He informed that the Council had succeeded in engaging all the stakeholders in the industry in a dialogue and was leaving no stone unturned towards ensuring that all facets of the industry was consulted with the aim of entrenching sanity in the port.
He disclosed that by the time the Council would be through with the ongoing consultation, it would now enter the most crucial stage in its assignment which according to him is implementation and enforcement of the industry best practices in the whole of the Nigerian ports.
The SAL boss however expressed the hope that with just few months to the end of the year, the Council may still stir up some changes in the industry adding that the Shippers, Manufacturers under the aegis of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) would come together to help the Council succeed in its task.
While calling on the government to quickly do the needful to make the job of the Council to be easier as well as extending the interim period given to it, Nicol however pledged the support of his association to the Council as according to him,” provided they know what we want”.
