Dr. Obiora Madu is a capacity building and training expert, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Multimix Academy and Global Learning Enterprises, he is also the Director General of the African Centre for Supply Chain Management. His academy, Multimix Academy has also been accredited by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria as one of the training institutions to train Nigerian freight forwarders. Our correspondent Dapo Olawuni caught up with him in Lagos last week and he spoke on a number of issues.
Dr. Obiora Madu is a capacity building and training expert, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Multimix Academy and Global Learning Enterprises, he is also the Director General of the African Centre for Supply Chain Management. His academy, Multimix Academy has also been accredited by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria as one of the training institutions to train Nigerian freight forwarders. Our correspondent Dapo Olawuni caught up with him in Lagos last week and he spoke on a number of issues.
What is Multimix all about?
Multimix Academy is a capacity building firm which specialized in the area of global trade that is; import and export, logistics and supply chain management, interventions which includes training and consultancy for the whole end to end of a supply chain from the beginning of when the material is procured to when the end product is delivered to the customers, that is the coverage area, we are very specialized and focused in these areas and this is what we have done over a decade now. We are proud to have about six to seven international certifications under our roof, of course this shows the quality of training we do, and for seminars and workshops, all the big companies in Nigeria are on our lists.
You train members of staff of these companies?
Companies send their staff for training and staff on their own also comes for certification. Certification is very crucial in the industry today, because it has started to push the degrees to the backgrounds , we all agree that people leave universities without competences, with education but without competences, but certification emphasizes your competency in the sense that third party and institutes’ are guaranteeing that the person is an expert, so gradually the industry is beginning to pay attention to certifications, for instance if I have a documentation problem, I will get a documentation expert, I don’t care how long it lasted or the cost, as long as he can provide the solutions to the problem, I don’t need a PhD holder to be able to resolve that, and of course you know that today many businesses are conscious of costs, if you can get quality and reduce costs, everybody will go for it.
`What is your assessment of freight forwarding practice in Nigeria?
I think things are beginning to look good with the coming of CRFFN, Multimix is also an accredited trainer for CRFFN, before the coming of the CRFFN, the maritime industry was a confused Industry, everybody wanted to be chairmen and presidents, so many associations were coming up every day and not working in the same directions for the industry to survive, but I hope and believe that with the coming up of CRFFN there will be a difference. Freight Forwarding is a crucial industry because the international trade cannot happen without the Freight Forwarders and freight forwarding; in fact, someone said ‘it is a profession whose time has come’. It is technical, very knowledge intensive and so it is not an all comers’ affairs as it is made to look like here. I believe that by the time CRFFN wields the big stick, the men will be separated from the boys; a freight forwarder is an international trade consultant, if you are an exporter, before you make your quotes, you need to speak to your freight forwarder particularly when you have to make a CIF quote where you have information about the freight, so you need to talk to your freight forwarder, you should be able to trust your freight forwarder and go and sleep with your eyes closed so that he will handle everything and delivers all your documents to the bank; I am not sure if that is what we have, but by the grace of God we will have that because training has commenced. One crucial thing in international trade is “compliance”, we recently started a new programme which is endorsed by the CRFFN, it is endorsed by all the government agencies at the port, SON and the rest of them, because the issue of compliance is of major concern to every government, the regulations are there, but people are constantly looking for how to beat the regulations. In the USA and elsewhere, if you do not have a compliance manager or officer, you can’t get involved in import and export, but here, we have introduced a pioneer compliance programme, in fact the first set has got certified and they come from big organizations such as Nestle, Dangote, Leventis and others and we believe it will catch up because the role of freight forwarders in the chain has quite a lot to do with compliance , managing the goods at destinations, the RAR and other documentation requirements, it shouldn’t be a matter of ‘how much does a customs officer needs so that the containers can go out of the port’ what it should be is ‘here are my documents and my documents are correct’ and then the container(s) can leave the port’.
Has the programme got participation from the maritime sector?
Yes, it has, the CRFFN attended and some freight forwarding companies also participated, with CRFFN’s endorsements of the programme, it automatically means that any freight forwarder who takes the certification will be accepted by CRFFN as a basis because for some time to come in the future, if you are not upgraded you won’t be able to renew your licenses.
Is it right to say that Nigerian freight forwarders are not professionals yet?
It is not completely right, because you have some of them that are good who understand the profession, some of them were custom officers before they came on this side, but the fact is that , generally it has been made to look like an all- comers’ affair and if it is an all comers’ affair , you cannot say it is professional, but also, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have few people who are professionals, the general thing is that it needs to be totally professionalized, the professional certificate in freight forwarding of CRFFN will be commencing soon, if you do not participate , maybe one or two years from now, you will no longer be able to call yourself a freight forwarder which indicates there is need for professionalism.
What is your relationship with the freight forwarding associations?
The compliance programme which I talked about was endorsed by NAGAFF and ANLCA, right now , we are speaking with ANLCA for collaboration in certain areas, an association like that does not need to go and set up their own academy, at a time like this when outsourcing is ruling the game, they are not structured to run academies, I know that NAGAFF has an academy but these associations are not structured to run academies, all you need is to find an existing academy that meets your criteria, sign an MoU, sit down together in a committee, identify the base, then design the programmes to satisfy your needs and move on, but for them to now take additional responsibilities of running academies is bad, running an academic institutions and running of an association are totally two different things, so we are having discussions and I believe that we will get somewhere because all the associations also see the need for professionalism.
Do you support the creation of more Maritime Academics in Nigeria?
Of course, yes. You see the maritime industry is huge, I think it was the Prime Minister of Malaysia in a shipping conference who said that every nation needs effective port system prosperity. So the maritime Industry holds a whole lot for this country, the youngest captain in Nigeria is probably somewhere around 50 years old; so, where are we going to? we have only one academy politically tucked away somewhere, even when guys are pulled from institutions abroad and put there, in three months they find their ways out; that is what has happened during the location of these research institutions, they were politically motivated , they carry institutions and put them in a place where the market is bad ,I understand that sometimes ago, the Yaba College of Technology was planning a maritime academy somewhere in Badagry, I think it will be a welcome idea, and I do not also see what is wrong with private sector people setting up such academies , we need specialized Institutions in this country, these days you will see institutions calling themselves Universities of sciences and technology while they will be offering English language and History which is part of what is affecting our educational system. So I think we need more of maritime academies.
Will you say the government should remove itself from the maritime academy or should it just be thrown open?
First of all, they should throw it open, secondly, if they want to be involved, let them go for the public-private partnership (PPP) model, I can tell you that some of the institutions that the governments have today, if you give it to me, I won’t need any subvention, six months down the line , we will start sharing profits, we know how public sector organizations run, public-private partnerships will bring the government weight, technical and private sector together, with this, definitely you will get there, then the terrain should also be leveled, those who are interested and have funds to invest in that direction should also be allowed.
Do you think the Nigeria Custom Service is qualified enough and prepared to handle destination inspection next year?
It is a difficult question that will not require a general statement because if customs do the job elsewhere in the world, why not here. Secondly, I also know that they have engaged in a very serious capacity building in the last years, there is a command and staff college for customs now in Abuja where training is going on regularly, this of course means that they are preparing to take up that responsibility when it comes. But I think also that there is need for a more robust training beyond their regular custom jobs, that way you would have eased off the conflicts that are usually arising among the importers, freight forwarders and the customs, because the unfortunate thing is that customs have a responsibility to the government, they also have a responsibility to the importers, on the government side, they need the revenue, they need to ensure that nobody brings arms and ammunition to the country, so if you have to do that, you have to thoroughly look at what is coming in to ensure that these things do not slip in, but at the same time, people are looking for quick clearance, this is conflict of objectives on both sides, which is why when you see a customs officer in a programme people will want to crucify him, but the truth is that they have joint responsibilities to everyone and trying to meet the objectives of everyone is difficult, but I think generally, our customs have not done badly , we have very brilliant guys there and I think if we need to be patient with them, because typical of Nigerians, once the customs take over now, they will start complaining, forgetting that you need a period of transition for things to work properly. I will also add here that they need to know the environment where they work; they need to start on time so that the learning cost does not get too high because Nigerians are not patient people.
Have you been interfacing with customs in terms of training?
Yes we have, they actually endorsed the compliance programme and we had some of their people on some of our compliance program, and even on this program we have people from the customs on the faculty. We have been talking about this compliance programme since 2005 but thank God it has got to a period where it is being recognized now. There is a presidential committee on trade malpractices, these people have responsibility to catch people who fail to comply, but I believe that the first thing is to tell people what they should comply to first of all, we need to get our system to work.
Do you think the CVFF is enough to acquire vessels or support indigenous ship owners?
Obviously, the funds is not meant to buy ships for people, it is to supplement what the people have, when people lack capacity, borrowing becomes very difficult, no matter how loose the conditions are, so capacity on the part of those who need the money to meet the conditions, I co-anchored a ship financing programme which the chamber of shipping organized for banks at the time the Cabotage issue started within the banking industry; the capacity to package the finance for ships was lacking, there were about 10 banks that underwent that programme, so it is not whether the money is enough, but the one that is there how many people have taken from it? How many people are able to meet the set conditions? Because there must be set conditions, but what we have in Nigeria is that any money that comes from the government side everybody calls it a national cake, so it is about the conditions for borrowing, what percentage are you expecting the people to contribute and so on.
Are the banks capable and strong enough to lend now?
I know that the banks are strong enough, they have actually financed some, banks have done some ship financing since that time.
Your assessment of the maritime sector in the first half of the year
Port services have been good, but people are complaining that the fees are a little on the high side, a lot of opportunites have been created for people who want to be in the maritime industry, lots of warehouses, bonded terminals and inland container depots are being established, but again there are complaints from the owners that containers are not coming to their terminals, all these are issues that will be resolved over time, but I think generally this industry is huge and it requires attention, I know that the president has a special adviser on maritime, I cannot speak on the impact that this has had on the industry, but I think that the fact that there is a special adviser indicates that the president recognizes that there is a huge opportunity for the economy in that direction. It has been fair, but I think it could be better, especially in the conditions, in increasing activities for entrepreneurs thereby eliminating unemployment.
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