The Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) has denied alleged plan by any of its member to close operations in Nigeria following harsh business environment occassioned by the sliding price of Naira in the international market.
STOAN also dispelled rumour making the round that some of its members were unable to pay staff salaries running into months now.
The spokesman of the association, Mr. Bolaji Akinola who made this disclosure in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos described such allegations as unfounded as well as the handiwork those he said were always in the habit of accusing the terminal operators of one wrong doing or the other.
Akinola while contending that STOAN should not decimate its energy in responding to what he called beer parlour talk however stated that the terminal operators were on ground performing their duty as spelt out in the concession agreement disclosing that none of the terminal operators had indicated interest in closing operations in Nigeria as alleged.
According to him,” why would I even waste my time in responding to such an idle talk? We are there, we have been meeting up with our obligations, yes, the trading environment is difficult, like you rightly pointed out, of course, terminal operators are there and we are kicking very well. We remained focused on our drive of turning the ports around, addding value to port operations, booting Nigerian economy, ensuring that there is no vessel queue on the waters, ensuring the terminals are not clogged, working generally in fulfillment of the vision of Mr. President for a transformed ports and the results are showing. Somebody said that our ports are now much better than they were and we will keep working”.
On whether the terminal operators are owing their staff, Mr. Akinola had this to say,” why should we? If you look at those conjectures, like I told you, speculations, people should not be sitting down there and thinking up of what else to say about the terminal operators in Nigeria. We are not interested in such talks and honestly, we don’t respond to such talks, they are idle talks”.
“Why should anybody close up operations? Yes, the drop in volume has affected revenue, the sliding value of Naira has negatively impacted on our revenue because as you said, we pay the government in dollars, we buy and service our equipment in dollar, only very few like the payment of salaries are what we pay in Naira. Agood chunk of our other commitments are paid in dollar. And now when you need more Naira to buy the dollar, you know what that entails, yet our charges are regulated, we cannot increase charges as we would have loved to, we can’t even increase charges without going through the processes spelt out on our concession agreement”.
Akinola who is also the Managing Director of Ships and Ports Communication Company while recounting the challenges terminal operators face in the counttry which make the business environment very challenging however noted that because STOAN believed so much in the President and the Federal Government of Nigeria, they remained focused and believed that these were just trying times that would soon pass adding that eeverything would soon be fine again.
