Engr Omar Suleiman will be remembered in history as one of the very few ‘home boy’ Chief Executives of Nigerian Ports Authourity. He joined the organisation about 28 years ago and today, he sit atop the grade ‘A’ agency as its managing director. In this brief chat, he talks about his vision for the organisation and other sundry issues.
How far has NPA gone in the push for the establishment of deep sea ports?
Engr Omar Suleiman will be remembered in history as one of the very few ‘home boy’ Chief Executives of Nigerian Ports Authourity. He joined the organisation about 28 years ago and today, he sit atop the grade ‘A’ agency as its managing director. In this brief chat, he talks about his vision for the organisation and other sundry issues.
How far has NPA gone in the push for the establishment of deep sea ports?
For us to remain competitive in the maritime sector in the West and Central Africa, we will need to develop new deep seaports, we started the development when I came in which is about a year ago, and now we have been able to do a lot, we have liaised with the Akwa Ibom State Government who recently gave us the certificate of occupancy of a land of about 5,000 hectares for the deep seaport in Ibaka. On the issue of Lekki deep seaport also, when we came in we were able to sign a concession agreement with Lekki and they have gone far ahead and it’s just remaining few financial issues for the project to start. But we did not stop there, we still went ahead to discuss with the Lagos State Government because we know that the Badagry area is also very deep and very good for deep seaport development, with this we have started full discussion with the Lagos State Government and I think we will able to break through with that. Therefore, so far, we have the Ibaka port which is going to be on fast lane because the state government is very keen in seeing the project through. Olokola has also started coming up; it’s a project that has been there for more than10 years now, but we have started discussing with them and they have started submitting some detailed designs, so these are the issues of the deep seaport, these are very important for the country to remain very large in the maritime sector in west and central Africa.
Have any of the deep seaports been concessioned to any private operator?
Yes, the model for the Lekki port started with a private sector, therefore that has already been concessioned to the investors and now they are raising funds to start the project, the Ibaka port is driven by the government through the Nigerian Ports Authority, it is at consultancy stage until we are able to do the hydrographic works before we start concession on them.
Has there been any improvement in the ports in the areas of security and cargo handling equipment in the past five years?
If you have been to the ports recently, you will find out that there are lots of improvements and lots of investments that came through most of the terminal operators, orderliness has been restored, they have also invested a lot in cargo handling equipment, APM Terminal has been able to bring in new four ship-to-shore cranes which are very important for their operations, and fortunately recently with the custom’s 24hours working, we will be able to deliver cargoes much faster than before. So, the concession has so far helped in terms of investment and in terms of port infrastructures.
What about the role of NPA, has it been able to play its own part concerning the concession agreement?
Yes and we also have slight challenges, one of the biggest return we have been able to give is in terms of maintenance of the Lagos channel, Port Harcourt and Onne, we were able to continue dredging the channel to about 13. 5 meters which is a very appreciable improvement and those are the things we said we should be able to do for the concessionaires. The towage and berthing of vessels, we were able to do that, on the issue of some of the infrastructures like the common- user facilities, we have challenges in Apapa, in Tin Can, we were able to do all the roads there, and major contractors are already working on some of them, we have a major challenge of 1.6 kilometer in Apapa which is going to be addressed before the end of this year, in Port Harcourt we have been able to rehabilitate the roads, the other challenge we have is in Calabar about the dredging which is still on the table and hopefully before the end of this year we should be able to get it through, we are also playing our part to see that the atmosphere for business is more conducive.
Have you been able to implement the reduction in the number of agencies at the port, is everything okay now?
Yes, I will say we were able to do that, because the reduction in the number of agencies in the port had some certain misunderstanding, the NPA and the Customs are not saying that the agencies should not do their work, what we are saying is that they will work on need basis, because there are certain agencies that are not involved in certain cargoes, but the practice before was that they will be involved in every type of cargo regardless of if it is within their jurisdiction or not. What we are saying now is that; you will be invited to do your job based on the type of cargo that requires your attention that is the only cargo you will sign the papers for inspection. This is unlike before when even though you have nothing to do with the cargo, the way the form was, you have to sign it before it get released, but its working very fine now.
What is the role of the NPA in the committee that was set up for evacuation of overtime cargoes from the port?
NPA is also spearheading it, because the cry was from NPA, as you know, ports are supposed to be purely transient and not dock houses, you are not supposed to store things there, so by the time you keep thousands of containers at the place, you are losing value, the value of port operations is the space, the container comes, it gets off-loaded and it moves, by this, you can use and re-use the space, but when you store a container there for one year, the value of the place has been destroyed as far as I am concerned. So terminal operators complained and we were able to meet the government that, please this is our issue and it is also reducing capacity of receiving vessels, you can imagine 3000 containers in a place, this is nearly one full vessel, if the space is available, they could be able to sail a vessel into the place. After our discussion with the government, we were able to set up a committee which NPA is part of it and NPA is also financing the project to move all these containers off the ports into where they will not affect the operations and anytime government decides to do anything with the containers, they should be able to do it, we were able to move over 4,000 containers from the Lagos area to Ikorodu.
What level has NPA reached in terms of infrastructure development?
What we are doing right now is that we are upgrading our old infrastructure, we have done a lot at the Tin Can quay wall, we have also done a lot in Apapa, and dredging is part of our big infrastructure, and the channel markings and so on, these are all that we are doing and I think we are up to date in terms of areas in Lagos and beyond.
How will you describe your past 365 days in office?
Interesting, this is so because of my understanding of the industry, you know I have been here for 28 years now and I have worked in virtually every department; engineering, operations, protocol and so on, my vision then was to make NPA competitive, to deliver service, to have the structures just like the other leading ports in the world that we all have been to, because NPA has trained us very well. So when I came in, these are the things we wanted to do and that is why we started pursuing aggressively the maintenance of existing infrastructures, but most importantly I also noticed that the capacity of our existing infrastructure is not enough to take us into the future, so I started also aggressively to see that we build a new port infrastructure, so I think we have done a lot in the sense that we have been able to get the land ready in Ibaka, the Lekki port has also gone advanced, and these are the things, the other challenges that we still have is because it is work in progress.
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