In this encounter with the Shipping Position Daily team, the National President; Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents; Prince Olayiwola Shittu talks about his perspective of the industry in 2013 and expectations for 2014. He also touched on issues such as: MAAG, PAAR.
What do you expect from the maritime industry in 2014?
In this encounter with the Shipping Position Daily team, the National President; Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents; Prince Olayiwola Shittu talks about his perspective of the industry in 2013 and expectations for 2014. He also touched on issues such as: MAAG, PAAR.
What do you expect from the maritime industry in 2014?
What I expect is for the Federal Government to retrace their steps with regards to policies in the maritime industry, the experience we had in 2013 is that government did not discuss with the stakeholders to advice on certain actions in the industry, but this is not far-fetched, maybe it is because the maritime industry has multiple ministries of the Federal Government that supervise the government agencies in the port, and they don't have a platform where they can warehouse ideas from their various agencies. 2013 was a year we look up to where one-stop-shop of cargo clearance would have come up, just like what happens in small neighbouring countries where charges are harmonized; where shipping company charges, terminal charges and so on are paid under one single invoice, but it did not work here because they did not want it to work, supervising agencies of government under the ministry of transport like the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Nigerian Shippers’ Council will rather want to talk to these people in order to prove their relevance in the scheme of things in the maritime industry, and they still have their own disconnect and claiming superiority of ideas. So at the end of the day, NIMASA that is in charge of safety, NPA that is in charge of technical supervision, and of late, Shippers’ Council that is in charge of regulatory activities do not even have that platform where they should be meeting regularly, not to talk of meeting with stakeholders. So, a lot of things went wrong in 2013 which they must correct, and because government is not ready to do this, that is what has informed stakeholders now to create a platform under private initiative for them to work on; which is MAAG.
I don’t understand it when you said stakeholders were not carried along, I know for a fact that you were a member of the Port Reform Committee
When we talk about stakeholders platform, I will tell you what happened in 2013, last year we had a meeting where the minister gave the go-ahead for us to have a platform where we discuss issues, you know there are so many contentious issues in the ports right now- terminal operators blame agents, agents also blame terminal operators and shipping companies, shipping companies on their own will blame everybody, agents do not blame themselves, so there was this platform that was created where the Executive Director of Marine and Operations of the NPA, Engr David Omonibeke was the Chairman, the secretariat of that committee was in NPA and it consisted of stakeholders like freight forwarders, custom agents, shipping companies and terminal operators. They were able to have just one meeting and thereafter it fizzled out, so who is to blame? At the end of the day we are not talking of committee, we are talking of the standing platform for jaw-jaw, this should be encouraged, in a situation whereby you have a problem with a particular terminal, let’s say TICT and we are in a meeting where TICT is seated, it will be better to discuss it collectively and place blame where it belongs and people will sit-up. It is true government do not have the platform, but government officials who are supposed to encourage such a platform do not want it to happen because they benefit from the chaos. So we are not talking of committees, the ministry of transport has established so many committees, both known and unknown, the honorable minister has the right to set up a committee, the presidential committee on port reforms which I was a member, I happened to be the only member who is a freight forwarder, we did a good job, we recommended to the Federal Government and it had a maritime retreat at the Villa and they adopted the Five Smart Steps that was recommended to unbundle all the hiccups within the maritime industry, but what has it led to? Apart from the customs that has implemented part of it now; which is PAAR, nothing has been heard, even in the one-stop-shop we are talking about, terminal operators do not want to corporate with shipping companies because everybody is sourcing for cargo. We do not have a platform where all these can be properly addressed, as leaders in the freight forwarding industry, our own job is to have meetings and correct disruptions, an average freight forwarder encounters difficulties and he does not want to know how it came about, but the leaders should know, because even if you blame terminal operators and shipping companies, they also have their own challenges, even agents have our own problems because we represent the interest of the importer, but so many disruptions are also caused by the importer, if the platform we are talking about is created, no individual association will be talking out of tune, because you will have the opportunity to complain under the platform. For example, when you finish your customs documentation at the terminals, and you are about to take delivery, the shipping company will tell you they have a letter from the Nigerian police of a particular division and that your container is among the list of those that should not be released. Is this part of the clearing process? But you realize that these commands are under the commissioner of police in Lagos State and some are under the commissioner of police for ports, but if the platform we are talking about is there, the commissioner of police who is part of NPA will also be there and the matter will be resolved once and for all, because if the police found out that something illegal is happening, they have the right to report to the appropriate arm of the government that should address the problem, if they heard, for example, that a cargo does not have permit, all they need to do is to refer the matter to SON, not that when they write the letter and you go to their office and money changes hand, they will ask you to go and carry your load. This is why it will be difficult for me to tell you my expectations for 2014, we have arrears of expectations spanning when I have been the president for four years and nothing has happened, all we need to do is to hope that maybe government will decide to wake up. The example of the platform I was telling you about could also be used to give proper advise to the minister, there was another meeting the minister convened when freight forwarders decided to close the port, the Special Assistant to the President on Maritime Services also came, the minister told them to have a meeting with the freight forwarders, they had the meeting and we sent our representatives, we as leaders decided not to go to that meeting so that they will not think that we are being compromised, they had the meeting, but by the time the representative of the government, that is NPA were reporting to the minister, it was a different thing because they changed a copy of the report and our people complained that there were omissions.
What is the relationship between MAAG and ANLCA like?
I told you about the frustrations we have had, ANLCA has been initiating ideas, we cannot force government officials to act in our interest, we also discovered that in the industry today, everybody is putting himself in a cocoon, but there must be a place where we can talk. Such a place was created earlier by CRFFN where leadership of associations are to be meeting, but that is for regulatory purposes and not advocacy, I cannot imagine CRFFN now going to confront customs when they are being controlled by the ministry of transport and customs is being controlled by ministry of finance, it is the failure of NPA that led to the creation of MAAG. The MAAG is a platform for us to exchange ideas, take a position and address it to the government, if anybody tells you MAAG has anything in mind they are wrong, that is why the motto is: Nigeria First. For example, not many people are happy with the government policy on vehicles, ANLCA can get up now and make their own position known on vehicles, another association in the industry can also come up and tell you that the policy is the best thing, but when we have a platform where we can consider how it will affect our members, because it will affect them definitely, there are many of our members who live on clearing of few cars for their livelihood, when this thing moves to the border then they have to go to the border too, when people who can be regulated and cautioned now move to the border to pay smuggling, who is the looser? So, MAAG is not even a statutory body established under registration of CAMA , it is a platform of all related stakeholders coming together, and today we have 13 stakeholders including transporters, have we had opportunity to speak with transporters before? We must ask ourselves, we must also know that the various transport associations like AMATO, NARTO and RTEAN are relevant in port operations, you can load a cargo in the port yesterday for N70,000, you can get there today and they will tell you it is N75,000 and you don't have a choice because you want to load. But should they have a platform and are able to be discussing with us, they will give us reasons why they want to increase their charges and we will tell our people, by so doing there will be a flow of information, this is the purpose for MAAG, and I can tell you that ANLCA is a member, because it affects us more, among all the stakeholders today, it is licensed customs agents that bears the brunt because our type of job is related to quick movement of cargo, all the others are ancillary services that goes with the movement of cargo.
Some people have also said that MAAG is an association of strange bird fellows
If strange bird fellows decides to sit on the table and get to understand one another's short comings and they address it, is it not best for the maritime industry? Because I can get up as the leader of ANLCA now and fight customs, when they call me to a corner and settle me, it has not helped the industry, but if we know custom is doing something wrong and we bring a position paper and all stakeholders endorsed it, it will get a better attention than one individual association. What we have done during our tenure in ANLCA is to bring sanity into the industry, in the past four years, have you ever heard where they said a port was shut down? So you should give us kudos for it, we also have leadership role among the stakeholders in the industry. The platform I am talking about would have also been better handled with government's supervision, and in the absence of the government. Who is the coordinator of MAAG? It is none of us, if ANLCA was chosen to be the coordinator, the associations will want to come up, we wanted somebody who will administratively do the run around on our behalf, but today irrespective of all the schism that has existed among us, we still sit together.
But it is mainly for freight forwarders
Let me tell you that we just approved the letter of invitation to STOAN and SON to send representatives to MAAG to be in the central working committee, so if you want to criticize terminal operators, they are also there in the meeting and they will state their own case. I am thinking that we should be commended for this effort, that's why we called it 'Advocacy and Action' which means that you can advocate, but nobody will hear you except you take action by putting it in the paper, unless you put it in the papers, government officials don't care, when we need action who is going to do the follow-up, the letter must get to the ministers of transport and finance and somebody has to be responsible for that. I can tell you all government agencies are being alerted about MAAG.
What obstacles do you foresee with PAAR?
ANLCA has been in the forefront of returning professionalism to this job, we came to know this when we became members of International Federation of Custom Brokers Association (IFCBA) with its headquarters in Canada. All over the world, customs does not operate the way Nigeria Customs Service are operating, IFCBA is the secretariat of World Customs Organization (WCO), they are the secretariat of WCO's Policy and Strategic Group that formulates the policy of WCO. I know they handle custom affairs of all country, it is then we discovered that activities in Nigeria are done as contract for certain individuals to handle, many countries that have used service providers are even turning back because they discovered that unlike Nigeria where it should generate money for whoever it should be, we saw the regime of CRI where if you pay duty no other person stops you, along the line, Customs discovered that even the RAR creates room for importers to influence the report of RAR, so Debit Notes where being raised, so customs went to government to prove that the system is not watertight and their debit notes were increasing. Our own argument was that if we can pick RAR and pay the service providers one percent for a RAR that is advisory when it gets to the customs, so why don't we deal with customs directly, we believe that we have a lot to gain if PAAR works well. I agree with you that we are having challenges with PAAR but these challenges are not insurmountable, because when you start a change, there are people that will resist change, the hiccups we are having in PAAR today is caused by custom officers themselves who are supposed to implement it and not the management. During the change-over from service providers to customs, you remember that government extended the time and now the service providers are lobbying that government should extend the time again because one percent FOB of all imports to Nigeria is a lot of money, so it is all about the money and nobody is thinking about professionalism, service providers would have called stakeholders like us and explained their alternative to improve the issuance of RAR and make it different, they wanted business as usual, so in their departure there was no proper hand-over. For example, when Globalscan was to take over Apapa from Cotecna, you knew the hiccup they went through, this was because Cotecna was not happy to hand-over what they have to a rival, it took a while for the issue to normalize and Globalscan was doing their job, but when government decided that customs should take over, the jobs they were not able to do were transferred to customs. They said customs is not ready to take over and were making use of their political influence, so they were not happy. And when you have to go and takeover somebody else's existing platform, he must create problems for you and this was the initial problem that affected the issue of PAAR, people were not patriotic enough to look at it like it belongs to Nigerians, the PAAR was part of what we the committee on port reform recommended to government under the five smart steps, but today the ministry of transport has not perfected their own platform especially as it concerns DTI, it is after you finished your DTI that your problems start. If customs officers believe they should operate like their counterparts elsewhere, then this is the time for them not to create a stumbling block. Clearing agents are also contributing to the problems presently, I have challenged our members, if you have a genuine case, bring the documents and see if I will fight for you or not, the problem I have with many of our people is that they don't want to hear the truth.
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