Pioneer chairman, Port Industry Anti-Corruption Standing Committee (PIACSC) Mr. Val Usifoh has broken his silence over the circumstances which led to his vacating office after about nine years.
Mr Usifoh disclosed that he decided to relinquish his position as chairman of the committee so as to give room for others to contribute their best in fighting the corruption in the port system.
The anti-corruption standing committee is a stakeholders’ body which was constituted about nine years ago by the Port Consultative Council with the aim of fighting corruption in the port system and addressing bottlenecks that may be experienced by stakeholders in the process of conducting business in the ports.
Usifoh who recently stepped down as the pioneering chairman of the committee stated that his decision to quit was because he felt he has got to his peak as chairman of the body and therefore had to give room for changes.
“I felt I have given my best and I have set up structures to enable the committee even get better after me, it is also an opportunity to allow the sponsors of the committee to do an appraisal and see which way forward” he explained.
While fielding questions as an invited guest on the popular maritime industry radio programme: Shipping Position Live, Mr. Usifoh also did an appraisal of the committee’s efforts since its creation in 2002, saying: “If you look at where we are today it’s a far cry from where we were nine years ago”.
He also admitted that port concessioning has impacted positively on port operations, even as he added that the exercise is a success.
Usifoh who is also the chairman of the Shipping Association of Nigeria (SAN) said “the fight (against corruption) has been quite successful but you know you can not quiet wipe- off corruption as you clean off a dirty slate, it is a gradual process because corruption is in-built in the human nature, so it takes time”
While listing some of the challenges that he experienced during his tenure as chairman, he pointed out that the structuring of the ports system under the regime of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) a terminal operator and master stevedore made it difficult to fight corruption in the port system while saying that concession has helped to minimize the plague.
According to him “ the way the port system was under NPA encouraged corruption, after the concessioning a few years back and the terminal operators come in to run cargo operations, they tried to instil some modern international best practices at the ports where there is now a substantially reduced human contact which is the vehicle for corruption. The systems are such that they are transparent and service delivery is now fast and efficient, we are not there yet but we are rapidly on the way”.
While speaking further on challenges that he encountered as the chair of the committee he said right from when they took off, NPA has been solely responsible for funding the committee, saying: “fighting corruption is not cheap and I think it is necessary for other stakeholders who benefit from that committee to make contributions
“The other challenges are that stakeholders do not make effective use of the committee, they don’t volunteer information because of the economic situation of the country and people are in a hurry to get their cargo out before they are auctioned”, he stressed.
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