President of the Shippers Association Lagos State;Reverend Jonathan Nicole had a chat with Shipping Position Daily's Dapo Olawuni last week in Lagos were he talked about how the Common External Tariff might affect Nigeria negatively. Apart from this, he was also full of advice for the reinstated Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA); Mallam Habib Abdullahi
What effort are you making to ensure that all shippers associations come together under one umbrella?
President of the Shippers Association Lagos State;Reverend Jonathan Nicole had a chat with Shipping Position Daily's Dapo Olawuni last week in Lagos were he talked about how the Common External Tariff might affect Nigeria negatively. Apart from this, he was also full of advice for the reinstated Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA); Mallam Habib Abdullahi
What effort are you making to ensure that all shippers associations come together under one umbrella?
We are consulting with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council and it is their primary duty to set up shippers’ association across the country, we have quite a few active chapters like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Bayelsa, and I have recently advised that it is better we invite them to Lagos so that we can start holding meetings. The effort is ongoing, but shippers are working on a tight rope now because of finances, there are efforts to make all the association's come together, that plan is on.
Recently, the Nigerian Ports Consultative Council came up with a maritime road map which will be submitted to President Buhari, were the shippers carried along?
I am not aware of that, we were not carried along in all of that, we were not involved, we were not even invited to that roundtable and I cannot speak for them. We are writing our own road map, if the President gets our documents, he will make his deductions and pick whatever he feels is right, we will send a representative to him with time.
What is your advice for the new MD of NPA?
He is a lucky man, one of the newspapers called him 'twice lucky', he should now restructure himself first before restructuring the Nigerian Ports Authority and I think the NPA needs a lot of restructuring because there is lot of dead woods there, he should be able to put the people in their right perspectives, the technical staff should go back to their technical beats while the administrative staff should come back to their administrative beat so that we can get value for our money. Nigerian Ports Authority ought to have been one of the very dynamic government parastatals, but sadly to say that they lost a very important aspect of their duty, the Federal Government knows why they brought back the MD and they know why they feel they need him at this time, if we have any problems as a result of his coming back and things are not changing, we will complain. We are supporting this government to some extent, but where their step is not right, we will complain.
What is your take on the implementation of the CET?
There is a clause beneath that tariff that says in the sharing formula, whoever brings the bigger cargo takes the larger commission, this will give you the reason why there is a sort of plan to scuttle the Nigerian ports, if you ask Cotonou port today, they will tell you they have developed their port and they can take all the cargoes if Nigeria doesn't want the cargo, and they are already doing this, if at the end of the day they have more cargoes they will take more commissions, that is what the CET says, and if they succeed in taking most of our cargoes to their domain, we will become second class citizens in the sharing formula. We looked at this and we sympatise with government, in the next 10 years if care is not taken, there will be no maritime industry as we call it today, because if Cotonou has a more liberal environment for business, I will move to Cotonou, I will establish there and there will be no need for me to come back here, this is why we are asking government to adjust some of its policies so that Nigerians can return home. So it is not just the CET, it is the sharing formula, and we are losing cargoes to these African countries because of their liberal way of doing business.
We don't kick against the government, we kick against the policies, and if the policies will help the country then it's okay, but every business man thinks ahead, we are looking at the present situation, if careful steps are not taken, I will move my business to Cotonou or any other place that is conducive for business, this is why we are meeting to make government listen to us, it is not about the Customs Service, it is about if they can really do business with the CET.
The court case between the Shippers Council, STOAN and ASLA was adjourned to 2016, is there any role you can place to make the hearing quicker?
The matter has been adjourned to February 2016, we sincerely feel that date is too long, the courts are on vacation right now and we expect that they will resume sometime in September, we are not resting on our oars. If you were in court at the last hearing on the matter, there was an abrupt service of processes on us a day before the matter came up because we took some actions, we filed processes asking that the appeal be dismissed because it was not being diligently prosecuted, and on the day the application we filed was supposed to come up, they served us their processes seeking to regularise their position as appellants, that is, they were seeking to do properly what they have not done before that day, and the new practice at the Court of Appeal is that such applications that are in locust, we expect that we pose them for opposition sake, but we allowed them to file their papers so that it will be heard on merit, the Court of Appeal has decided to take all such applications in chambers saving the day for other matters since the opposition of the application will not produce any result. We are putting up application to bring forward the date that the Court of Appeal has slated for determination of the matter, we are hoping that the application ordinarily should not be opposed by the respondents, so this will fast-track the hearing of the appeal, we know that Shippers are suffering and the sooner the matter is determined the better for the industry, we are doing everything to fast-track the hearing.
It is clear that the collection of POF by the CRFFN is going to be paid indirectly by the shippers, how ready are you?
The word practitioners fees means that the freight forwarders will have to pay that fee as a condition for them to practice in the industry, the Shippers Association has never been approached to absorb that bill yet, so I think it is a matter they are dealing with, the government is already involved in it, we hope they will come out of it and everybody will move on.
Your association has kicked against the collection of 7% surcharge, don't you think this will hurt the Shippers Council's revenue since it also benefit from this money?
That aspect will be dealt with by our attorney, if you look at the amount that comes out of the pocket of Nigerian shippers, we have never complained, but it is right for us to know what the funds are meant for, if there is a diversion of funds, I think we ought to know, it is one of the things we are looking at and if the Nigerian Shippers Council is benefitting from it, we will try to support them.
What is your take on the re-introduction of the CTN?
We had a meeting with the Nigerian Shippers Council and we were reassured that the CTN will be free and it is not tied to any fee whatsoever, so this is our stand, we don't want additional charges and we made it clear that shippers will frown if there were charges.
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