Owolabi Omotayo (Water transporter)
In my own opinion, the Local Content Act will enhance the full implementation of the Cabotage law because now we will begin to look inwards; it will also build and enhance our local capacity because now we are going to build- in the local participation in the sector and this will again enhance and help to improve our technological know- how; unlike some certain fabrications which are currently being imported from abroad for the oil and gas industry will be fabricated here for use and this will save a lot of foreign exchange for the government. It will also enhance the Cabotage law in the sense that government will always ensure that the operators look inwards first before they think about foreign participation, they should give more priority to indigenous participation and by this, the Cabotage law will be implemented.
And when we talk of indigenous participation, the government should also boost their effort to assist the operators to grow; we have money in this country: the government should get the real people that will grow the indigenous sector.
Major Henry Ajetunmobi (Rtd) (GM, Facilities, Sifax Group)
If you say because a law or body is not working and you decided to set up another one to address it in the same environment, meanwhile you have not looked into what made body ‘A’ not to be effective and you are setting up body ‘B’ in the same environment, if the issues that have made body ‘A’ not to be effective are still on ground and you ask him to collaborate with body ‘B’ in the same disenabling environment, where do you expect the miracle for body ‘B’ to happen simply because it is collaborating with body ‘A’. If the banana peels that have led to the inefficiencies of a leadership structure are not removed and you bring another leadership, it will not work.
My own personal impression is that the Cabotage law has not really delivered the expected result in the maritime sector, the few questions that should be asked is that: is there something wrong in the drafting of the law? Maybe not, the problem lies in the implementation of the law, what are the instruments necessary to implement it as enshrined in the Act? The power of implementation of the Act should be properly vested on the agency that has the power of punishment for those that default in respect of the law. The agency should also be given the political will in order to ensure the implementation, if not we will be back to the same problem. There is nothing wrong with the drafting of the Cabotage Act, it is the implementation.
Chuks Okereafor (Terminal operator)
I believe the Cabotage Act needs funding and until this is looked into, we cannot talk about taking advantage of the Act, if you want to participate in Cabotage you must acquire a vessel, the vessels will be manned by Nigerians and it must also be engaged either in the oil industry or in other importations, how many qualified manning agent do we have? How many indigenous experts do we have in ship repairs? If the major works are still being done by foreigners, then we should not talk about Cabotage. The main restriction of the Cabotage Act is in the oil and gas sector for now, because looking at both the upstream and the downstream, there are many other things involved like vessel insurance and so on, all these require enormous money which is not to be provided by one person alone, the banks too must come into play or through the government, meanwhile the government has tried it before but it was not successful.
Hence if all these things are not in place, you cannot really talk about taking advantage of the Local Content Act. First, Nigeria does not have the experience yet, compared to the Greeks and the Filipinos who have acquired the training over the years in terms of ship manning and ship repairs, so implementing the Cabotage relies on a lot of things that must be in place even if you want to take advantage of the Nigerian content, buying the vessel is one thing, the maintenance is another as well as the chattering.
Mazi Joseph Anabaraonye (Registrar, FFAN)
The Local Content Law is basically for the oil and gas industry and the maritime industry is one of the service providers as far as the oil sector is concerned. So when you look at the Cabotage Act and the Local Content Act, they are almost saying the same thing which is- bringing the indigenous players into the lifting of crude oil, so the relationship you are going to have there is that if the two Acts are to be implemented harmoniously, the shipping services in the oil sector through the local content Act will be reserved for the indigenous ship owners which is what the Cabotage is meant for, so they are two Acts that are similar in nature and what this means is that the indigenous shipping companies will now have an opportunity to participate in the oil and gas shipping services.
That Cabotage is not being implemented is not because we do not have the capacity, but because there is this lack of political will, there is no vessel anywhere in the world that if we say we don’t have it locally we can not charter and to say this is why we have not been implementing the Act is nonsensical and it has no basis, if we don’t have it now, we know where we can get it. If you also come to the oil and gas sector, tell us the kind of vessel you need and we will get it anywhere in the world, so there is no way you will say it is lack of skill or non availability, these are just political jargons.
Ossai Uwaka (Petroleum Marketer)
I believe the Local Content law will definitely increase chances of Nigerian ship owners who have been long deprived of doing business in the oil and gas sector to now come in and participate. But for this to be fully effective, they must position themselves in terms of capacity building, ship acquisition and so on, these are areas which I think in the past have been undermined by maritime professionals. We need to know that for the Cabotage to have effect, vessels must have to be owned by Nigerians and Nigerian companies, the crews on board those vessels must also be Nigerians.
Otunba Kunle Folarin (Chair, national seafarers’ welfare board)
The maritime industry will of course benefit because there are so many articles in that law that give opportunities to the maritime sector. In fact in totality, it’s saying that all the cargo generated in the sector should be carried by Nigerians, so it is a D-day for Nigerians but they should not cry Hurray like they did while waiting for the implementation of Cabotage.
Indigenous ship owners have another opportunity now, they should stop talking about being sidelined, the Act is for everybody, and if the NNPC is not enforcing the Act then, they can go to Court and ask the court to interpret it, or if they find that there is somewhere somebody is lukewarm or exploiting the weakness in the law, they should go back to the National Assembly to ask for an amendment.
Eng Alex Peters (Marine Engineer)
The Local Content Act easily addresses the foreign domination of the oil and gas sector, the manufacturing sector and other productive sectors of the economy, for the maritime sector. The Cabotage law seeks to do the same thing, seeks to wrest the control of Nigeria economy from foreigners. So, the application of the Cabotage Act does not have to look to the local content Act for cover in order to succeed. Indeed the Cabotage Act goes deeper in its effort to ‘Nigerianise’ the economy in the sense that it seeks to be more proactive by actually creating the industry it seeks to ‘Nigerianise’.
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