…Says agencies not allowed to execute their mandate
The Maritime Advocacy and Action Group (MAAG) has accused politicians as well as some perceived powerful stakeholders in the Maritime sector of thwarting the efforts of some government agencies operating in the sector in carrying out the mandates given to them by the Acts establishing them.
Speaking in a telephone interview with Primetime Reporters, the National Coordinator of MAAG, Alhassan Dantata stated that with what was happening in the case between some freight forwarding associations in the maritime industry and the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) and the legal action instituted by the Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) against the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), it was obvious that efforts were on to disallow some government agencies from carrying out their mandates.
According to him,” there are lots of government agencies that are not allowed to execute their mandate in their Acts, like for instance, what is happening now with the Shippers’ Council and STOAN. STOAN took Shippers’ Council to the Court”.
“Shippers’ Council has been appointed to regulate the ports and the problem with the ports is that the cost of service delivery vis-à-vis the value of service delivered. So, when the NSC did their own investigations across Africa, from South Africa to the West Coast on port charges, they now communicated and had series of meeting with STOAN and the Shippers’ Council now came up with a new rate regime and because STOAN have been having a field day, they felt they cannot be regulated anymore. So, they now went to Court”.
Dantata further said that the same was what SON was passing through in the hands of some freight forwarding association who felt that SON was standing in their way of having to import substandard products into the country.
“But we have now sidelined the issue of quality control; allow smugglers to bring in goods with impunity, substandard goods into Nigeria. That is also destroying our own manufacturers; manufacturing is dying because cheaper and substandard products are coming with impunity”.
“Unfortunately so, some of the clearing and forwarding agencies are owned by the officials of other government agencies, so, how can an armed robber arrest himself?” he queried.
He added that what MAAG was doing was to sensitize the government on the unfortunate situation and for government to redesign the way forward or scrap SON as according to him, “there is no point, SON is not allowed in the ports, they were accused of delaying goods from being released from the ports, but since they left the ports three years ago, the situation has worsened now. Yes! It is even worse from what it was in 2011”.
While calling for government’s intervention to enable some of these agencies perform optimally, he however advised all parties in the suit between STOAN and the Nigerian Shippers’ Council not to do anything that would jeopardize the judicial process saying that all parties should wait for the outcome of the court before any further step should be taken to avoid over heating the polity.
