Mr. Festus Ukwu (Director Publicity, NCMDLCA)
I believe government should review some aspects of the agreement with the terminal operators; most especially in the aspect of charges. This aspect is the most common problem the operators are faced with when dealing with the concessionaires. The fact remains that these people are taking advantage of the lacuna that exist in the system at the moment, but we must commend the government for the need to review the agreement and we are in total support of that. Again, there is need for government to compel the concessionaires to stem some of their cargoes to the bonded terminals because this aspect of the agreement has been frustrated.
Comrade Aloga Ogbogo (Executive Secretary, NARTO)
We are in total support for government to review the concession agreement with the terminal operators ,this is so because there is the need to develop facilities at the ports. It is obvious that these people have not been able to develop the structure they inherited from NPA 10 years ago. The government needs to check what they left for the terminal operators because nothing has been done so far to that effect. Also, in the area of capacity building the government need to ask questions knowing fully well that the concessionaires do not impact much on their personnel. Equipment are not up to standards, we experience issues of system breakdown at the terminals and we also want government to look into infrastructure decay at the ports in order to boost trade facilitation, because we want a level playing field for every stakeholders in port operations. Government should also appeal to the concessionaires to provide holding bay for trucks in order to ease traffic and for trucks to have a place to park.
Dr. Segun Musa (Chairman, NAGAFF MMA Chapter)
I think the Federal Government should cancel the concession exercise and encourage the private sector to build private ports that can compete with the government ports. The major problem we have with the concession exercise which must be corrected is that there is no competition, there is this private sector greed which must be corrected, there is no genuine regulations guiding the concession exercise, and there is lack of expertise on the part of terminal operators.
Dr. Zebulon Ikokide (Stakeholder)
The NPA on their own needs to review the charges they collect from the terminal operators, because this is one area that is creating problem for the concessionaires. Suppose the NPA is a bit fair with the charges collected from the terminal operators, I think there will be some level of fair play as regards charges in port charges. However, the idea of reviewing the concession agreement with the terminal operators by government should start from the NPA itself, but it is better for government to have it at the back of their mind that it is not supposed to be one sided because the concessionaires pay huge amount to NPA as well.
Chief Boniface Okoye (NCMDLCA)
The concessionaires are tenants in the ports and NPA is the landlord, there is no where it is done all over the world whereby a tenant can go against the landlord's directive. The concessionaires are terrible people because they do whatever they like in the area of charges which has also affected the Nigerian Shippers Council regulatory functions due to court injunctions. In my own view, there is need to revisit the port concession agreement, because so many things are wrong in our ports. There is no handling equipment in the respective terminals, 60 per cent of their operations are done manually which in-turn has been affecting trade facilitation and 48 hours clearance of cargoes from the seaports.
Greg Ogbeifun (President, Ship Owners Association of Nigeria)
The major thing is the kind of regulation that affects importation into our ports, clearing of cargoes from our ports, and evacuation of goods through our ports. Also, multiplicity of regulatory agencies namely: SON, SSS, NDLEA amongst others have made clearing of goods not very easy and time- consuming. Since the concessioning of the ports, there have been some improvements in terms of cargo handling procedures, so the terminal operators are doing the best they can to improve in that area, but the regulation and procedure of clearing remains a challenge. The biggest challenge of them all has to do with lack of appropriate infrastructure to evacuate the cargoes; we all know the state of the ports and the efforts being made to rectify it without success.
Simeon Olua (NAGAFF Chieftain)
The performance of the terminal operators supposed to be reviewed before their lease is extended, but nobody reviewed them, we just heard recently that some of them have been given extension just like that, they even had an association, they increase their charges when they like, even the Shippers Council cannot control them. We are not happy the way concessionaires have handled the port in terms of port charges, when the NPA was in charge, we were given one week free demurrage, the highest you can pay on a container no matter how long it has stayed in the port is N1000, but under the concessionaires, you start paying N8,000 after two days your container arrives and they charge progressively.
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