The Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) has assured maritime stakeholders that it will work with the federal government to see to the successful establishment of the National Single Window (NSW) in the country.
The Executive Secretary of the NSC, Barr. Hassan Bello who gave the assurance in a goodwill message he delivered at the grand finale of the NAGAFF at 20 ceremonies held in Lagos on Tuesday said that they needed the port to be automated as operators were tired of manual practices which he said bred greed and unnecessary troubles.
Represented by the Deputy Director, Monitoring and Enforcement of the Council, Mrs. Celine Ifeora, Bello said that the establishment of a National Single Window in Nigeria was not only timely but long overdue saying that “when you know what Single Window stands for, you will know that for us to succeed in whatever we are doing in our ports and for us to be competitive with what is going on in the world now, there must be an establishment of Single Window in our sector.”
According to him, “Why do we need this thing? To fulfill our trade related issues, be it import or export, be it cargo that is on transit. This single window issue is all about facilitating trade. Now, when we talk about trade facilitation, what comes to our mind is simplifying our processes and procedures. It is also about standardizing our processes and procedures and also about harmonizing our processes and procedures. Why do we do this? We have to do this to ensure we eradicate all manual processes which bring about corruption. We also want to do this because we don’t want people in the port to have human contact, we need to put this in place so that you can stay at the comfort of your room or office and transact whatever business you want to transact without seeing anybody.
“Let me say that not long ago, I was in Cotonou on behalf of Port Management Association of West and Central Africa (PMOWCA) and we had a programme on Single window, that is about three years now and you won’t believe it that nearly all the countries in West Africa have put in place single window except for Nigeria which is supposed to be giant. Cotonou, for example, told us that when they put the single window in place, that their revenue increased by 38% which is quite high, it is almost 50%., our cargo dwell time reduced from 14 to 7 days. These are some of the reasons why we have to spend so high to join the people who are doing the right thing and people who are succeeding for us to be competitive.”
The NSC boss affirmed that although the ports had been concessioned in order to have adequate cost in every service that was rendered, operators were still having so many problems adding “we want to bring in efficiency but efficiency is like running away from us.”
“That is why people are currently undergoing physical examination, even the scanners that we have, most of them are not working. Cargo dwell time is still going up. The last time we went for monitoring, we found out that cargo dwell time is between 20 and 22 days in our ports, meanwhile, somewhere like Cotonou, it is just seven days, some fifteen. Look at the turnaround time of vessels; it is going high from five to eight days. Right now, one of the terminals that we visited, it is not as if they told us story, it took them eight days. Vessel turnaround time, something that we achieve a few months back we brought it down to two days but it has gone up again not to talk of the truck turnaround time, we all know what is happening.
“We, therefore, that is the Nigerian Shippers’ Council is assuring all of us here that we will work with the federal government to see how we succeed in putting up this single window in our country. We need to be automated, we are tired of manual practices, it brings a lot of greed and unnecessary trouble.
“We are also advised here to be committed and dedicated in what we are going to do to help the issue of single window come true in Nigeria. Let us not say it is government’s issue, it is our issue, this country belongs to all of us”, he admonished.
Photo: The Executive Secretary of NSC, Barr. Hassan Bello.
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