A foremost Mariner, Captain Tajudeen Alao has described as good news the planned re-establishment of the national carrier by the Federal Government to expand the shipping business in the country.
Also who made this assertion in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently said this was so because Nigeria had not been partaking in international trade adding that President Buhari had made up his mind to re-establish it even as he said that the Minister of Transportation, Hon. Chibuike Amaechi was only championing it.
According to him,” The President said it, that was part of his campaign promises, so, the Minister has no choice than to fly it. The stakeholders need to key into it because we are not doing international trade at all. We are doing cabotage which is not really cabotage in the real sense of it and we are doing oil and gas.
“So, it is a good step in the right direction, the Minister must champion it”.
When asked whether the absence of the national carrier was the only problem bedeviling the maritime sector as at today, he had this to say,”No, it is only a part of it. In the past ten years, we are not doing international trade and what is the shipping position? And the people are crying that the cabotage is not working. We need to review the cabotage law in order to bring in foreign investors to partner with Nigeria.
“We don’t want those practitioners since that thing is capital intensive, Nigerians cannot afford the money, Nigerian banks cannot give somebody up to ten million Dollars. So, you need the foreign people to partner, they must partner with not businessmen but professionals whom people have known have 30 to 40 years career in the business. They will do the thing right.
“So, the coastal trade, the oil and gas, international trade, those three aspects of shipping must be encouraged. There are no boats going from Cotonou to Abidjan anymore carrying passengers and building materials”.
He however advised that the Minister needed to expand the scope to bring in people who have been in the shipping business before to chart a way forward for the proposed national carrier.
“People who run Niger Brass, Aeromaritime, Yinka Folawiyo and Sons, Falcon Line, AOL, you need to know why all these shipping companies went down, bring those people to give us reasons why they failed and not oh! The Management run down the national shipping line, I don’t believe so. The changing time, the economy of scale will start with small liners”, he said.
Capt. Alao recalled that there was a time the idea of having a West African shipping line was muted to take care of Ghana and all other West African countries saying that”We need to do that so that it may go beyond Nigeria to include ECOWAS so that the cargo for the whole of West Africa will be protected. But right now, how many cargoes are we importing into Nigeria? Look, in 1984/95, there were only three ports in Apapa, so if you have the ships and then you are not importing any, what cargo do you carry”.
He observed that Nigerian shipping companies have always been involved in one leg charter, import nothing exported only empty containers stating that in their days as mariners, they were exporting logs, cocoa, palm kernel oil, palm kernel cakes, hides and skin among others.
“We have to see that we export something abroad then it will not be a one leg charter. So, it is not on balance and there is no income. We are going to look at those legs that make up the maritime, you have the institutions. The Minister was right in saying that the maritime university should not be, he was right but it should not be like a political vendetta because NIMASA was not empowered to set up schools, they don’t have the wherewithal. I would have say let the Navy take over that one and then negotiate and protect the waters for us, the forward base where they can protect the sea”, Alao stated.
He therefore called for a zero duty on ships that indigenous ship owners would bring into the country alongside their spare parts just as was done for their counterparts in the Aviation sector.
He further canvassed for a special exchange rate for ship equipment as well as ship financing for ship owners to buy ship arguing that since the Aviation sector had gotten such waivers, the Minister of Transportation should champion same for the maritime sector in Nigeria.
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