Ship chandlers under the aegis of the Nigerian Licensed Ship-Chandlers Association (NLSCA) have said that the country loses close to $10billion annually to illegal chandelling activities in the country.
The association said this recently in a chat with the Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
Speaking on the plight of ship chandlers, the National President of the association, Dr. Martins Enebeli, blamed the huge loss on the disconnection between the management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and ship chandlers in Nigeria.
Dr. Enebeli, also urged NIMASA as a regulatory body in the maritime sector to look for functions that are directly related to shipping and carve out a clearer policy formulation in line with the international best practices.
He also said that although the problems facing the profession is enormous, they are also surmountable adding that Nigeria is a very legalistic country which is structured in judicial processes.
He also lamented a serious communication gap between NIMASA and stakeholders in the chandelling sub sector in the maritime industry.
Enebeli repeated the same fears when he met with members of Maritime Reporters' Association of Nigeria (MARAN) last weekend in Lagos, where he upped the figure of losses to US$15Billion. He however attributed the losses to the non-implementation of the Cabotage Act and the Local Content Development Act by government agencies.
He particularly indicted the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Local Content and Monitoring Board (NLCMB) for allegedly conniving with the foreigners to carryout jobs meant for Nigerians.
He alleged that there are 20,000 vessels calling yearly at various ports in Nigeria, but that surprisingly, only 5% of the number patronizes Nigerians for their ship supplies. He said that due to the inactions of NIMASA, the vessels consumables such as food, water, lubricants among others are supplied by foreigners.
Enebeli said many of the vessels even prefer to take ship stores at neighbouring ports of Togo, Cotonou, and South Africa after collecting freights from Nigerian importers.
He called on the National Assembly and the Minister of Transportation to set up an independent standing committee to deal with the challenges holistically.
"How can the hub of maritime activities today be in Cote d’ Ivoire, why would Nigeria-bound ships that we pay the freight rate among others, go to Cote de Ivore, Cotonou, Lome and Durban in South Africa to go and take food ship stall of $2million dollars to bring cargoes to Nigeria"
"NIMASA has well trained personnel in regulatory functions but the agency has been politicised, the core mandate of regulatory function is no more there, let them rise and do their job"
"There is high level of illegality going on our waters, a lot of them hide under the guise of chandling, NIMASA are the same characters that form alliances and give these jobs to foreigners. Why is NIMASA far from stakeholders? How many times have they called for stakeholders meeting where these issues can be sorted out, but all they do is collect 2% levies to service politicians and steriotyped civil servants"
"The local content law gives us 95% of the jobs on the waters, It is only when we do not have comparative advantage that expatriates should be brought in, but the NLCMDB would not implement the law", he said.
He stated that, ‘’a ship can not move without victuals, lubricants among other things that will make the ship to be able to surmount the challenges at sea’’.
But major ship requirement are being allocated to foreigners in the country. We only come in as third party operators"
The group alleged that port concessioning has had negative impact on chandelling operations because presently, terminal operators do not allow Nigerian ship chandlers access into their terminals despite collecting annual levies from them.
Enebeli decried that even after collecting these levies, terminal operators still extort money from members of his association.
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