Oluyinka Onigbinde
More than five years after the Federal Government announced plans to float a national fleet, setting a deadline of six months, findings by Shipping Position Daily have revealed that the much-touted national fleet idea may have hit the wall.
Although the chairman of the committee for the National fleet implementation who is also statutorily the chairman of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council; Barr. Emmanuel Jime had recently confirmed to our correspondent that incentives from the government is the major reason the national fleet is yet to see the light of the day.
You will recall that a national fleet implementation committee was set up by the then-Minister of Transport, Rotimi Ameachi to drive the project.
The committee, as part of its efforts to attract foreign investors had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2016 with a Singaporean shipping company; PIL to establish a private sector-driven national carrier with equity of 60 to 40 per cent respectively.
The minister later blamed the failure of the agreement on Nigerian ship owners whom he said could not raise the 60 per cent stake given to them.
However while responding to a question raised by our correspondent regarding in a recent interaction with the media, the Executive Secretary of NSC and chairman committee on National Fleet implementation; Emmanuel Jimegave an update.
He disclosed that there are incentives that need to be put in place for the private sector to get on board and buy into this project, but said those incentives are yet to be released by the government agencies that are supposed to support the project.
Jime who appears not to have full details regarding the national fleet, said there are different stages for the implementation process which include the consultation stage, the incentive stage among others.
He pointedly blamed the lack of incentive from the government as the main reason the private sector is yet to buy into the project.
According to him, “Shippers Council was given the lead as far as this effort (national fleet) is concerned; when I joined and the briefings I got clearly shows that I will become the chairman of the fleet implementation committee. There are stages of consultations because there are incentives that need to be in place for the private sector to get on board and buy into this process. It’s capital intensive and there is no way a businessman will put his money into something that he is not sure of, unless he is satisfied that the framework will guarantee returns on his capital”.
Explaining further, he stated, “government normally steps in to grant some incentives, then we have the CBN, Ministry of Trade; these are agencies responsible for how we can articulate that. So we have a set of incentives, we are now moving to the agency that will grant that, it’s not only one person that has the responsibility to grant those incentives. And unless we have those incentives in place, we won’t be able to get the private sector to buy”, he said.
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Speaking further the NSC boss explained that the plans to also have a national carrier aside from the national fleet is killing the purpose of the national fleet, stating that members of the national fleet committee are also members of the committee set up for the purpose of a national carrier.
He said, “Having said that, we got an invitation one morning to come to the ministry (of transportation) and they are now talking about raising Nigerian flag vessel; fortunately when the committee was set up they brought in people who are members of the fleet implementation Committee as well and they informed them that fleet implementation is already doing almost the same thing they are doing and we don’t want to be working at cross purposes”.
“Because we are talking about ships that carry Nigeria flags doesn’t mean they are owned by the Nigeria government; that’s my understanding of the fleet implementation that we are leading, so pretty much, that’s where we are until we get to the point of concession” he said.
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