Nigeria set for public sector cargo support scheme
Dele Aderibigbe & Folashade Alli, Lagos

recently Nigeria may have embarked on the initiatives of institutionalizing a Public Sector Cargo support scheme, in an aim of boosting both shipping development and indigenous capapcity in the sector. The Director General of the nation’s apex maritime regulatory body, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Shamsudeen Adegboyega Dosunmu disclosed this last week in Lagos, even as the Chairman of the Indigenous Ship-owners Association of Nigeria (ISAN), Chief Isaac Jolapamo raised alarm that the Niger Delta crisis had reduced shipping operational activities in the country to a mere 25 percent of optimal capacity.

Delivering a paper with the theme, ‘Revisting the Cargo Allocation Policy’, at the Nigeria 2008 Conference held at the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, Dosunmu stated further that when the scheme becomes operational, the country would be enabled to would track all public sector generated cargoes, pool them and make them available for Nigerian carriers. The Director General who was represented by the NIMASA Director of Shipping Development ,Mr. Boniface Igwe, noted that a study commissioned by the agency has shown that public sector generated cargoes constitute over 70 percent of total cargo generation by Nigerian foreign trade, adding that NIMASA actually considered all cargoes, including those generated by all of the three tiers of governments or their agencies either as in direct production or as financed by such institutions. Such cargoes he explained also include those generated from public sector contracts/projects as well as government assistance scheme and development assistance/aid programmes etc.

“Cargo support is a necessary and important strategy for the development of Nigeria’s fleet capacity”, Dosunmu pointed out, adding that the implementation of a public sector cargo support scheme would compliment other programmes of NIMASA, particularly the cabotage regime and the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) to evolve a viable national fleet capacity capable of carrying significant proportion of Nigeria ’s seaborne trade. “Interestingly, the NIMASA Act 2007 provides the agency with the legal framework for implementing a public sector cargo support scheme .The agency is at the moment, making all the necessary arrangements to articulate sound and workable modalities and guidelines for the operationalisation of the scheme. “The seeming slow pace in operating the scheme is deliberate to ensure adequate planning and provision of necessary soft and hard infrastructure for the efficient and effective administration of the scheme. We are confident that the scheme would not attract international criticism, unlike the cargo sharing programme which attempted to control all cargoes under the 40:40:20 rule, including the private sector-generated ones, thereby contravening the principle of free competition on commercial basis.’

Meanwhile, the ISAN Chairman has called on the authorities to take genuine interest in the Niger Delta crisis, noting that the restiveness in the area was already constraining shipping activites within the country to a mere 25 percent of actual capacity. The ISAN boss who was speaking the theme ‘Correcting the Imbalance in Wet Cargo Affreightment’ in Lagos, also frown on the nation’s poor showing in the downstream sub-sector of the economy, saying that the some operators sharp practices was not helping matters. Advising that Nigerians must take a bird’s eye view of the activities in the sector in order to gain bettew understanding, Chief Jolapamo also blamed the banking industry for sectoral low result, highlighting that banks in the country were still giving loans to shipping operators in “two digit” as being un-helpful.

He observed that though majority of oil traders now own vessels, the over all goals of a robust development of the shipping sector was still far from being achieved, as majority of vessels operating in Nigeria were acxtually over 30 years old. The situation he observed further may equally have been further compounded by the fact that majority of the seafarers we have today were half baked who have jettisoned professionalism for vessel acquisitions. He indicated that the country was yet to record much more than an abysmal 10 percent success mark on offshore activities, as a result of Nigerians failure to tap into the lucrative business sector, adding that it was for this reason that ISAN has floated a shipping company, specifically to load crude oil.

He however regretted that the government has not given the organization the necessary approval. He counselled against over concentration of efforts for now on issues of ship building, positing Nigeria was not yet ripe for that, more so as the country’s shipping industry was still largely stagnant and may neither compliment nor fathom the nature of the jobs being carried out by shipping yards like the Snake Island.
 

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