Mr Moses Fadipe is the National Coordinator of the Port Standing Task Team (PSTT) and also South West Director at the NigeriaN Shippers’ Council (NSC). He spoke about his experiences with Joshua Yousouph, on the sidelines of the recent launch of a book which he wrote.
You wrote and launched a book, which is a resource to the maritime industry. What does this book entail and what is the inspiration behind it?
I give God all the glory, because the journey of this book started when I started going through some travails in the industry. I was once the Head of Complaints at the Nigeria Shippers’ Council (NSC) and that was the period they will call the Shippers Council a bull dog who has teeth but cannot bite. But we proved to the industry as at that time that we are a repository of knowledge and we would tackle you scientifically with all your weapons; you will be forced to hands down. That was the strategy we used that time.
This book by his title: “Nigeria and Global Maritime Industry”, is just a synopsis of how Nigeria evolved in terms of maritime, right from 1912 to present day. And we look at how it evolved vis a vis Maritime Global Development in the whole world. Looking at how successful Nigeria has been over the years and how more successful the global nations are, even when they have less than 20% of what our Maritime Coastline was and their waterfront. For example, Nigeria has 850 square kilometers of coastline while we have a waterfront of about 200 nautical miles. So the question we’ll be asking ourselves is, why are other nations who are not as big as Nigeria thriving and successful? That is Nigeria where we are. That was one of the inspirations of that book. To know where Nigeria started from, where we are with current government policies which have not given the desired results, so that researchers, students, academicians, government personnel, will know what the past looked like, what the present is, to enable them to foster the future. So that is the main inspiration. The book also talked about my personal experience in 30 years in the industry.
Despite your busy schedules, what is your motivation for writing this book?
In life, everybody is important. Any time you start feeling relevance in your life, you must start to document it. That is why, when you are given an assignment; definitely you will give a report. So every day of my life, before I sleep, I must jot something down on how has my day gone? How has it been? I will write them down, even down to my personal expenses when I first started. I used to take a record of activities that have happened to me in the space of time and even with my financial expenses to know if I have crossed the boundaries of my budget. So in those days; right from 2015 when I was the Head of Complaints Department at the Nigeria Shippers’ Council (NSC), I have been putting down and scribing down things gradually. Going up in the space of three to six months, I look at it again and update it, until I find myself as the National Coordinator where I now communicate to the eyes; to say this is how things must be done now. So that’s exactly how I got the book done.
Some of the major things that were mentioned doing the book review were some of the confrontations you had during the course of carrying out the assignments given to you. Can you mention some of these incidents that are very key to your motivation for writing this book?
Every night by 9pm, my wife will call me asking where I am. I would tell her I am at home. We can even do a video call knowing that by 11pm I would be out there. Sometimes when she calls me by 5:00 am and we are still in operation, I would quietly go to a place and lock myself up and talk as if I am just waking up just to keep her mind at rest that I am fine. Well, there is a slogan that says “the more you look, the less you see”. Until you find yourself in the position of authority, what we are just seeing is just the periphery. When I found myself in that position of authority, I discovered that it is a very dangerous terrain. Why did I say this? We will just conclude a programme in which one of you in that programme will be talking about an issue and everyone will be on the same page. But by the time you go into the action part of it, you now discover that there is a network thing. That man you sat down with in the afternoon is a receiver or somebody who has sent information to the people that are wrecking that havoc on the streets. And when you try to arrest those people and lock them up, it is those same persons that will come and plead for them; saying they are first-time offenders and should be pardoned. If you look deep down, they are beneficiaries. Those are the things that motivated me at the point to say I have to start to put down all these things for people to know before they even find themselves in the position of authority. If I have been fully prepared to know how it works, probably my strategies would have been different; probably nobody will be able to torture and ambush me, probably I would not go through some of the things I went through. But now I have seen and learned. If the opportunity comes again, it will be a different ball game.
Are you satisfied with the turnout of people, acceptance and review of the book you just wrote?
What other satisfaction do I want? Someone said that this programme has made it possible to bring someone he has not seen for the past 20 years. You can see the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Shippers’ Council that bowed out in 1997. There was another CEO/Executive Secretary of the Council that bowed out in 2002 present at the book presentation, as well as the current Executive Secretary of the Council. We also have the in attendance great captains in the industry with the likes of Prince Olayiwola Shittu. What kind of fulfillment do I want? Look at what people said in the book presentation that I didn’t even know before now. It balls down to one thing which is integrity. It is good to have integrity. If you have integrity, you have the whole. I can hear people say- Fadipe come, if you need anything whether on the job or personally you can reach out to me. Some of them are journalist friends that have criticized me in the past and we have not been on the same page but still, they look at what is the issue of time in all these. So my joy knows no bounds. You can see ‘my mother of the day’; Chief Mrs Ezenwa. She is from the East while I am from the South West. So if someone from the East can say she can take a bullet for a South-Westerner, then you should know it goes deep down beyond what you are thinking. It is not about money. It’s about that man, his belief and what he has been able to do in that short period of time to be able to transform the nation.
A former Executive Secretary of the Council made mention of the limitations of the NSC Act and the need for it to be reviewed. Going forward, how do you think the Council will be able to have teeth to bite in the industry?
The Act is at the National Assembly. You know it had gone for the first time during the time of President Muhammadu Buhari. It was sent the second time and they returned it. It is now going back for the third time and I want to believe that nothing is going to stop it this time around. Asides that, it was said that the Nigeria Port Process Manual (NPPM) has been gazetted already. This means we now have the government authority on it. The Business Facilitation Act of 2022 which makes Ease of Doing Business Policy a Law and service failure in the port arena is punishable. The Shippers’ Council is the agency leading those instruments. So what do we need again? While the Act is coming up, these are the things we are using to checkmate the industry.
There are speculations that there are similar or overlapping functions in the Shippers Council Bill that just passed second reading and the National Transport Commission (NTC) bill. Do you think these two bills can be passed successfully at the NASS?
The NTC Bill has also returned back to the House of Reps. But the Bill that recently passed second reading has to do with the Shippers Council Act of 1978. We need to strengthen that particular Act which is our regulatory powers. The NTC is to regulate the industry. Even without the NTC, if your regulatory powers are strong do you need an NTC? We need to make our powers regulatory in nature and not advisory. So the two bills are running concurrently. Which eventually comes out successful is a win-win for the Shippers Council.
