- Focused on Tech Driven Port
- Aims to Align with FG’s National Single Window
- Getting Private Investors to Commit More to Ports Infrastructure
INTERVIEW: Our Port Automation for Economic Development on Course
Abubakar Dantsoho, Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) spoke to reporters on the sidelines of his maiden tour of Lagos Port Complex and Tin Can Island Port. He expressed optimism in evolving an improved port system that would engender development for the nation’s economy
Armed with a combination of experience and institutional memory about the pre concession and post concession port system, the new MD of NPA is proving to be a round peg in a round hole with brighter prospects to make positive impacts within record time. Ismail Aniemu was on the tour
Excerpt
What informed your tour of the Lagos and Tin Can Island Port Complex
First of all this is a tradition and the tradition is that when you assume office as MD or as board chairman of NPA , you are expected to go on tour of the facilities under your mandate.
Naturally because our Lagos operations is the bigger part of NPA, we started from Lagos with what we call the Western Ports and we will move to the Eastern ports which include Port Harcourt, Onne, Calabar, Warri and others.
In Lagos, we started from Apapa Port which is bigger than Tin Can Island Port. I think it’s just part of the tradition, to familiarise ourselves with what is on ground, to see people and have a discussion about how to move the organization forward, listen to what they say in form of advice, observations or assessment.
From this visit,what is your assessment so far?
Compared to the last 20 years and even more the reform that ended in 2006 was a clear departure from when NPA was doing both the cargo and shipping parts of the business. Right from 2006, NPA was structured in the way that we are concentrating on the ship side of the business.
A private sector people are doing the cargo handling and that is how we came about the terminal operators that we have now in Apapa and Tin Can. The essence of bringing the terminal operators, is for Nigeria to be able to have a more advanced infrastructure and a more advanced equipment without using public sector money.
If we bring in private sector practitioners and terminal operators, what is expected of them by Nigeria is for them to improve. Infrastructure and equipment. This is the key objective .As you can see, somehow, we have achieved part of the aim.
In Apapa, we have companies, terminal operators like APMT, ABTL and others. Over here, we have Five Star Logistics and others and they are doing their best to improve the ports. That does not mean that we are where we want to be or that we have achieved 100% of the goal we set out to achieve at the beginning of the reform.
We are looking to see how we can improve the relationship and integrate in a way that we can move faster. Because of that , government is trying to see how we will have electronic integration as soon as possible which is what we call a port community system, which will advance into the National single window.
This is a major project of the Federal Government and the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola has been focusing on that at the national level.
On the International side, Nigeria has been demoted to a no category member of the IMO.We are trying as much as we can to change that to a Category C status. That status is a rewarding status for us a country. It gives us a kind of feeling of importance and influence internationally. It is a campaign, because we have to be elected and Nigeria has started the move with the President’s support and approval to ensure that we get back to the category C at the IMO.
Therefore, we decided to have our region behind us which is the West and Central Africa. We have not looked at it like that before but based on advice of experts, we realize that if we are going to play any game outside our region, we need our region to be with us.
For Nigeria, the core members of the PMAWCA which is called the Ports Management Association of West and Central Africa which has 24 countries as members and out of the 24, only four are English speaking including Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the rest of the 20 are French speaking. We have strengthened our relationship with the countries.
This time around , God made it possible that they realized the importance of Nigeria and appreciate that Nigeria is the giant of Africa and so they elected me as the chairman of the PMAWCA so that we can make that progress.
In summary, the idea is to expand our capacity in this maritime sector and make sure Nigeria is on the, right side and so we have taken the advantage of our population and capacity for influential cargo throughput.
We can’t have 200 million people and be doing only 2 million containers. 2 million containers is not even enough for 20 million people of Lagos State. That means that most of the cargoes that come to Nigeria come through either the borders by smuggling, on trucks via trailers, motorcycles and through our pockets.
You can go to Ghana and buy something and put it in your pocket and when you come to Nigeria with it, It is transportation. We are looking to see how we can get this our industry more organised and efficient so that we can take advantage of our population for import and export trade.
God has blessed us with a very huge population which is almost 65% or 70% youths. Our capacity to buy and sell which is purchasing and trading power is bigger than most of the countries in West and Central Africa. That means we can import and export more for ourselves because we have a democracy that is very robust.
You said something about the private investors in this whole scheme.At least you have given them kudos that if you have not done 100% , you have done up to a sizable percent. For you as the landlord, are you playing your part with regards to ensuring that the infrastructure aligns with international Standard?
Like I said, the Federal Government is doing the best it can. Right now we are almost getting there by starting the port modernization project which is going to worth a lot of millions of Dollars.We are also dredging the channels and doing a lot as regards technology. People who have been here will testify that we are far better in terms of technology than most of the other agencies.
We don’t do anything in NPA now without technology including the payment of our salaries. To that extent we are doing as much as we can to do better.
For a while, you have been part of the system and the focus has been on getting Nigeria ports to have the hub status within West and Central Africa. From what you said are you assured that technology ,infrastructure and increased equipment will take us there?
Historically, we have always had the natural advantage of being the hub status of oil and gas. The reason is that we are number six around the world in terms of oil producing status. Now we have the Onne port.The Onne Port is the home to all the major offshore oil logistics in Nigeria. All the majors ,about eight of them , Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total are all based in Onne. We have this natural advantage that made us a hub status for oil and gas.Where we have to achieve that status that is very important is in container cargo.
That is why I said we are doing 2 million containers and it is not enough. We have the biggest players here. The people who are number one around the world: APMT is Maersk Line. I told them earlier that they are doing 7 million containers per annum and they are only bringing 500,000 containers per annum. They have the right to carry these containers to where they want because it is the reason they are big. Instead of dropping our containers in Nigeria, they continue to drop them in Lome, Ghana. When we put our house together, I think they will invest more money because bringing more containers here means spending more money on infrastructure and equipment .
