…Set to tackle increased traffic head on
Following the recent pronouncement by the Federal Government on its intention to ban the importation of vehicles both new and used from the land borders effective January 1, 2017, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has expressed its readiness to accommodate the volume of traffic envisaged at the nation’s seaports as a result of the ban.
The Managing Director of NPA, Ms Hadiza Bala Usman who disclosed this at a media parley in Lagos to mark her 100 days in office blamed the dwindling traffic at the nation’s seaports on government policies on importation of new cars.
Usman however believed that with the ban, the ports would experience increased activities saying that the agency had put the required mechanisms in place to ensure that additional traffic would not form any bottleneck in the activities of the ports.
“We have seen the ban on the importation of cars through the land borders. The Nigerian Port is very ready to take it on; we are very ready to have a seamless operation of increased traffic. Some of the traffic we have seen dwindling was a function of the government policies on importation of new cars.
“With this ban on importation of cars through the land borders, we will see an increase in activities within our ports and we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that additional traffic will not form any bottleneck, that we will always have that capacity to handle and utilize the increase in traffic effectively. Hopefully, we will get more traffic during the ban, we will just up what has existed before and our terminal operators are keen, they have been actively working for increased traffic. So, they are ready to take this increased traffic on”, she said.
On synergy with other government agencies at the ports, the Managing Director informed that they were working with the Presidential Committee on Ease of Doing Business led by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo which had provided them with the platform to enable synergy across all government agencies adding that they had been enabled by the committee to define their synergy even as she said that they would continue to do that within the ambit of the committee and outside of it.
In her word, “This is also very important as we move towards having operational efficiencies within our ports. As we have those agencies, we are also mindful of their relationship across the board, we are careful that there is no duplicity and overlap which results in challenge. Governance needs to be seamless, governance needs not to create bureaucratic bottleneck for people.
“So, these are some of the things we are doing, as we build the synergy within the agencies of government, we try to see that the bureaucratic bottlenecks are removed, that the agencies don’t try to make shipping companies fill out forms that duplicate these things. So, we are doing these things within the ambit of the Presidential Committee and we are also sustaining the discussions within ourselves”.
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