The Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has indicated his intention to convene an all inclusive stakeholders’ meeting for stakeholders in the Nigerian maritime industry later this year.
The Minister who made this known at the opening ceremony of a two-day Maritime Summit organized by the Tell Communications limited in conjunction with Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) in Lagos on Monday said he would have time to meet with the Executive Secretary of NSC, Mr. Hassan Bello to agree on the modalities for the meeting.
Amaechi noted that in the said meeting, he would take time to listen to the experts adding that the listening would mean to fashion out the best way to move the maritime sector forward.
“You know, now, the railway sector is moving forward, we are commissioning by May, the Abuja-Kaduna rail line. By March, we will test run it when the coaches would have arrived, before the end of the year, we would have commenced the construction of Lagos-Kano standard gauge rail line. Hopefully, we shall also commence construction of the Lagos-Calabar rail line. If we do that, we would have taken half of the country. If we complete this two rail lines, we would have connect half of Nigeria by railway and we will be convinced that the movement of goods and services would have been achieved”, he said.
He explained that the Ministry was looking at the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) to see how it could partner with a Chinese company so that goods from either Lagos or Port-Harcourt could also be moved by sea up to Onitsha and to Lokoja as well as to the new seaport that had been recently completed in Niger State.
According to him,” I hope that when I will convey this meeting either in Abuja or in Lagos, all of you will come but that one will not be by them, it will be by me and it will be a dialogue, proper conversation, it will not be a monologue. It will be a forum where I will listen to and you will also listen to me, gradually by God’s grace, I am becoming an expert because I have been listening to people talk maritime and by the time I would have had enough information to talk to you, so that by next year’s budget, you would have seen the difference.
“I wish you God’s blessings and I urge you to continue with this spirit until the ES reminds me before the end of July or August to organize one in which all of us can sit together and converse. There will be no high table and low table; everybody will be on the same level to discuss that”.
Send your news, press releases/articles to info@primetimereporters.com. Also, follow us on Twitter @reportersinfo and on Facebook at facebook.com/primetimereporters or call the editor on 07030661526.
