A foremost maritime practitioner, Rear Admiral Godwill Ombo (rtd.) has scored the Nigerian maritime industry very low in comparison to its contemporaries in the West and Central Africa even as he said that the industry was ailing in several ways.
Ombo who made this observation while speaking with newsmen in Lagos however stated that the only way to reposition the sector to become a hub in the West and Central Africa was to put maritime professional at the critical areas of the industry so as to turn the industry around.
He said,” if you have maritime professionals in critical areas in government to drive the maritime industry, they will bring out policies that will move the maritime industry forward. There is no magic about it. No man can give what he does not have.
“So, so long as government looks critically and put professionals or square pegs in square holes in every aspects of the maritime industry, I am particular about the maritime industry, things will fall in place”.
When asked the way out of this quagmire, he said,” Do exactly what I have said and in a short time, Nigerian ports will become a port of destination to Nigerian shippers”.
On his assessment of the Nigerian ports in the last nine months, Rear Admiral Ombo who is also the Patron, Shippers’ Association of Lagos State (SALS) had this to say,” We are not doing well period. If most of our shippers go to Cotonou and Lome and send their cargoes there and then begin to smuggle them into Nigeria, what does it tell?
“But if policies are strong enough to encourage shippers to bring in their vessels or bring in their cargoes to Nigerian ports, then we will be moving forward. So there are so many issues that make shippers run away from our ports or make shipping companies think twice about bringing cargoes to Nigeria.
“Why is our Warri port not working? Why is our Port-Harcourt port not operational? Why has the Calabar port gone underground? If we have been doing what we should do over the years, these ports should not have gone underground”.
He pointed out that these lapses must be corrected before the new deep sea ports that people were planning to bring on board began to come on stream.
On his assessment of President Buhari’s administration so far, he said,” A tree does not make a forest. Put professionals where they belong and they will deliver for this country”.
He advised that the new deep sea ports under construction in the country should be linked up with rail tracks for easy evacuation of goods by rail from the ports so as to avoid the mistake of the past which had plunged the country into perpetual agony.
“They must learn from the mistakes of the past. Every seaport in this country know that shipping is a global business and it must be inter-nodal for it to be a successful port”, he said.
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