The Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Mr. Benjamin Ezra Dikki has said that in spite of all the challenges Nigeria had gone through in the concession of the ports, the port reform had been a resounding success.
Dikki made this observation at a one day conference on “Review of the Port Concession Agreement with focus on Rights and Obligations of the Lessor and Lessee, Role of the Economic Regulator, Effect of Persistent Gridlock on Port Access Roads on the Concession exercise” organized by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) in collaboration with the International Maritime Exhibition and Conference Limited in Lagos Lagos last week.
He affirmed that those who want to judge the success of the port concession infrastructure wise from what obtained in 2006 when the port concession took place could go back to inspect the ports today as to ascertain that the concessionaires had made investments, improved on the infrastructure as well as had moved the ports from where they were to the highest level of standard operation.
Dikki informed that at the wake of port concession, it was originally conceptualized that a regulator would be in place before the concession but somehow along the line, the concession went ahead without a regulator in place as a result of delays encountered while trying to pass the Ports and Harbours bill which according to him had remained on the floor of the National Assembly till date.
The BPE boss disclosed that the absence of a regulator at the appropriate time gave a lot of latitude to the concessionaires to determine their rules of engagement and in most or many circumstances, do what they wanted in terms of arbitrary charges and quality of service delivery.
“And that was why we were part of those who seriously canvassed that the Shippers’ Council serve as an interim regulator so that there will be a regulator who can call the operators and the concessionaires to order. Like I earlier said, in spite of the challenges, we are happy to say that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council is making a difference.
I will call on all the stakeholders to join hands to ensure that Ports and Harbours bill is expeditiously passed so that we move away from the interim regulator to that of a permanent regulator who will ensure on a long term sustainable basis that the expectations of the port concession are attained”, he said.
Dikki applauded the conference saying it was timely as some of the concessionaires were coming to the end of their tenure thus affording the nation of the opportunity to begin to look at the rules again with the aims of looking at those things that were left out that needed to be included as well as clauses that should be introduced to ensure better delivery or moving forward.
According to him,” So these are all that this conference is supposed to attain, that we do a post-mortem and see where we have done it right and improve on it. We also do a post-mortem to see where we have done things wrongly or with the virtue of hindsight we can see a better perspective towards the whole thing and make the necessary amendments.
“On this note, I want to say very clearly that BPE is solidly behind the Shippers’ Council and its regulatory role and in canvassing that all stakeholders put their hands on deck to ensure that the Ports and Harbours bill is expeditiously passed.
“We are equally of the opinion that the port concession has done this country some good, so all we need to do is to fine-tune and prove the benefits to government and in a collaborative manner that may be typical of PPP consideration, every party should have a bit of the fight and at the end of the day, the good of the country will be sustained”.
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