Comrade Benson Adegbeyeni is the President of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) branch of Senior Staff Association of Communication, Transport and Corporation (SSACTACT). Recently, he had an interview with some maritime journalists in Lagos. He touched on perceived wrong actions of the immediate past MD of NPA; Malam Habib Abdulahi , he was also full of advice for the new MD, Ms Hadiza Balla Usman, urging her to concentrate her efforts on promotion of staff, employment among others. Shipping Position Daily's Dapo Olawuni was there for Shipping Position Daily.
“People that failed the promotion exam did not prepare well”
"Habib Abdullahi came back to NPA like a wounded lion, he started running NPA as his personal property as if he wouldn't leave again"
The morale of NPA staff is currently down, what is your advice to the new MD?
Whoever told you that the morale of NPA staff is down is correct because when there is no motivation, definitely your morale would be down. Somebody like me, I spent 12 years on a level, this should have fetched me four promotions, by now I should be a General Manager in NPA, but it was not done. When you are getting the same salary for the past seven years, definitely your morale will be down, or they promote you and yet your junior is earning more than you, if the facility to discharge your duty is not there, definitely the morale will be down.
What effort did you make as a labour leader to correct these anomalies in the past administration?
I don't believe in the past, to me there is nothing that can be done about it. When I came on board about a year and six month ago, within that period, I have worked with four managing directors of NPA, divide 18 months by four and you will realise the time is short for you to achieve. The former MD, Habib Abdullahi was so adamant and this was what my predecessor was fighting before he left office, I came in and continued with it, he kept on procrastinating on our demands until he was sacked by President Jonathan Administration. They brought Ado Bayero who was a lawyer and a prince who has not even worked before, he was in the process of learning and all the anomalies we pointed out were corrected, but we were having a board Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih who refused to sign anything. If the MD approves and the board chairman says No, you cannot get anything, so there is a lot of bottlenecks, protocols and procedures in NPA that make it not to work. If the management says they are giving the staff something, the board has to ratify it, and the board members are only interested in what they can take out of NPA. After three months, Ado Bayero was removed and HabIb Abdullahi came back like a wounded lion, he started running NPA as his personal property as if he wouldn’t leave again. I even forced Habib to carry out promotion of staff.
What is your take on the NPA building renovation?
Look at the NPA headquarters now, they have been renovating it for seven years under five Managing Directors, you can see how much they have spent on the renovation, former Vice President, Namadi Sambo and Chief Tony Anenih are the owners of the contract given to Sageto, they are yet to hand over the contract, but already doors are falling in NPA and toilets are not working again. The air conditions are not working. If you go to Flour Mills Nigeria Limited, we started renovation at about the same time their construction started, they have completed within a year with all facilities put in place. What NPA should have done at the time was to bring down the whole building and start from the scratch, by now we could have got somewhere. The building is weak already, they should have brought it down, and started from the scratch.
Is it true that NPA is short staffed and recruiting through the back door?
Right now, we are short of staff, I discussed with Habib Abdullahi but unfortunately for him he did not fulfil this and yet he was advising Hadiza on a succession plan. Five years from now, NPA will be virtually empty except security officers they recruited. As at now, the jobs I am doing, I have not seen anybody to come and under-study me and I will hand over to when I am leaving, when you talk of knowledge, it could only be acquired over a long period and not in a short time, when you are not injecting new blood into NPA it means you want to kill the organisation, maritime knowledge cannot be acquired in one day. I have spent 32years in this organisation and I started from the scratch. So, when you talk about recruitment through the back door, I disagree with that. However I cannot rule it out because of the Nigerian factor, because even those that they conducted exams for, they are yet to be given letters of confirmation.
We learnt that the questions set for the promotion exams were too hard, purely academic questions, some staff complained, what is the situation now?
I don't believe one question is too academic, it depends on your level of preparation, the only thing I will say is that WAEC set the questions and we were unable to see it. The process has been finalised before I came into office, but I kicked against it that WAEC should not conduct the examination, the questions should be based on the job the staff were doing, WAEC did not even give the staff tutorials, they just set based on condition of service. The questions were logical but still based on the job; some people who wrote the exams told us that if you had prepared yourself, you should at least score 50% in the exams. But what happens is that when some people were employed into NPA, they refused to continue developing themselves, some of them cannot even operate a computer, some cannot write memo. In the same exams that some people were complaining of, some people equally passed, it was the same question, it means people that failed did not prepare well.
Now that Hadiza Bala-Usman is MD, do you think she would be able to correct the anomalies in NPA?
With God on her side, I think she would correct it. One thing I observed in Nigeria however is that immediately somebody is appointed into office, they usually change. As the first female MD, she has the energy and the men to fulfil the task ahead.
Since Monday, the MD has been calling for departmental briefing, and we have so many departments in NPA. On Monday they started with Engineering, and this department alone has many units, they will go in to brief her, tell her the constraints and possible solutions.
The Federal Government might probe the N5.1b headquarters rehabilitation contract, would you advise her to start digging files?
When you say you are probing or digging, it would not give you time to work, put the past behind you, you are now the MD, it all boils down to what can you do? Stop the anomalies and start building what people can see. The federal government has been probing for a long time but yet what have they achieved from it? Most of the people they are probing will depart from PDP and go to APC and they would be given a soft landing. I am not against her probing, but I would advise her if she wants to do that, to set up a committee that will be probing while she focuses on her work, because by the time she is leaving office, she would only be judged by her achievements.
What is your take on the allegation that Customs is frustrating Single Window effort of NPA?
The landlord should control the window, we saw customs arguing with the Minister at the commissioning of our CCCIS recently, but we know what has been happening in this country, the shady deals of customs would now be seen and properly monitored with what NPA has installed. It is a very big challenge to Customs. We are trying to link our system to customs, NIMASA and others so that we can monitor them; this is why they are afraid. We know what customs is doing in Nigeria, they will release a cargo that has under-declared duty and short payment to government, it is the same Customs that would go and waylay the container on the road.
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