Dr Eugene Nweke, former President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) is the Head of Research at Sea Empowerment and Research Centre (RGT). In this interview with PAUL OGBUOKIRI, he speaks on port congestion, customs modernisation project and the Lekki Deep Seaport amongst others. Excerpts

The major ports in Lagos; Apapa and Tin Can Island intermittently witness cargo congestion .What is the cause of the congestion?
I want to ask you, as a journalist, a question. Have you found out that the ports are congested .For God’s sake ,the ports either directly or indirectly touch the life of an average Nigerian by its activities. Now the loader point where the ship and its content exchanges with other modes of transport, it is assumed to be congested. Have you ever sat down to think about the economic implication, the security implication and the societal implication of a congested port?
There are three things that cause port congestion. Port congestion arises where the outwards cannot go out, and inwards keep coming in. What this means is that those that are supposed to go out are not doing so. For example, if you take a bucket of water and you bring 25 liters of water to pour into a10 liter bucket, when it gets to the brim it is going to spill over. It is the same thing with the port congestion. But if there is an outlet where the water being poured into the 10 liter bucket is going out there will not spill over, that means there won’t be congestion in the ports.
What am I trying to say? When the inwards out number that which the port can accommodate, then port congestion is bound to happen. But what will make cargo that has arrived not leave the port? This is where we look at International best practices. We will start to look at the equipment on the ground. We will start to look at efficiency in terms of manpower and port design structure. And also what is the stacking level? What are those performance indicators that are required of a port operator? It is when you have assembled all these that you can now identify the challenges. Most times they say that the problem we have is dwell time of cargo which is with the customs. But customs has refuted that by saying that the dwell time is with the shipping companies as being arranged. The shipping companies will come and say that it’s when they receive cargo from terminal operators.
So they start passing the buck. But the situation does not call for buck passing. It is for us to settle down and find out where the problem lies. Why do we have longer dwell time of cargo within the customs and the shipping lines? For the shipping lines; for instance, there is no way in international shipping where you have an office structure in the country and you still ask the shipper and the agent to wait until you get a release order from your overseas office. That takes days, even when you try to send it through e-mail. They are still holding you down for the next three days. Those three days that they held you down are attracting storage charges. For those three days, cargo that is supposed to leave the port is still lying inside the port. That is not a sign of efficiency.
So if you put together what I call the port cargo delivery process, handling and delivery process, under a chain and you touch light it ,you should be able to say this is where our problem is coming from, and this is what government should do .But the final question is, who plays the supervisory role ?Who should enforce what? These will take you back to what was the structure of the port concession agreement? You heard the NPA managing director say their hands are tied; that they cannot even invoke certain concession agreements. That means that the concession was done against national interest. Just like I have been hammering on the e-customs concession

One of the major criticisms of the e- customs modernisation project is the issue of security implications to the country. Some have argued that it’s improper and risky to concession an IT department of the NCS to a foreign firm. What is your take on this?
This goes beyond what we are saying. Remember that because of the same conspiracy, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) conceptualized their own and called it e-invoicing. They have obviously forgotten that all of us came together to discuss with them .And the manufacturers sided with them at that time. We said no, you don’t create another portal and say every invoice must pass through that portal. And it’s the benchmark that you put there. That is to say you are already increasing the value of importation from the port of origin. You don’t do things like that.
The question I ask is: Must we have this criminal urge to conceptualize ideas that would extort a nation? We must know that there are certain international conventions that are extant. They are extant because Nigeria is signatory to them. So you don’t just wake up and believe because we are in an IT driven world that you can just package anything and bring and even appoint. Before you do something of that magnitude, the National Assembly must be aware. The minister must vet it, but there is a paradigm shift between them and the minister. That was why I was saying that when monetary policy collides with fiscal policy, the nation will always pay for it.

The Minister recently toured the ports in Lagos, namely Apapa and Tin Can Island ports. During the tour he promised to get the rail track in Apapa running within two weeks. How realistic and feasible is this promise?
Well, we will give him the benefit of the doubt, but if I will say that we have been given many promises in the past and, where are we today? We are still where we are. It is not a matter of making promises, it is about performance. Let me tell you, we are gradually losing our regulatory control over China. Mark it, it’s coming to pass. Go and check the construction works going on in the country, all are being done by the Chinese. There is a high level of impunity everywhere.
I listened to Fashola when he came to inspect the Badagry road when he asked the construction company to speed up the work because it’s election period, so that people can vote for us.
Every contract has a timeline. So by the time you want to address so many things at the same time when you have not delivered, then some other people should find out what is her style. This is where I look at the political class, the level of damage they have done to us.

You talked about the port concession. It is about 18 years now that the port concession took place, would you say that our ports have benefitted from that programme?
Eugene Nweke has made so many presentations on this subject. I have been at different fora as far as that is concerned even on platforms. So I would rather ask you now. You were here when we started it. What is NAGAFF doing here today? For you to go through Apapa, you are barricading every street in Apapa, thereby suppressing trucking within the streets and outside Apapa. Is that a healthy development? You don’t even need to visit it from the technical point of view, just take it from the societal point of view. In my column in one of the national dailies, I wrote about the “pitfalls of concession”. Compare what I wrote then and what is happening now. When concession came up in 2006, there were high hopes that it was going to transform the port and all that. But today some of those hopes appear to have evaporated, just as there are high hopes of e- customs modernisation projects. Some people are singing its praises. Infact some even think that Eugene Nweke does not know what he is saying. Most of your colleagues do not understand what he is talking about- like he talks too much. It’s the same high hope with e-customs concession.

When we were doing PAR, it was the same high hopes. The high hopes keep going. It is just hope rising.
Let’s look at the Lekki Deep Seaport which has been criticized for lack of access roads befitting a project of that magnitude.

This has led some to even predict that the project is a disaster in the waiting, because of the absence of some key infrastructure within that port corridor. Do you agree with that position?
I am one of the proponents of that project. I am also aware that there is only one entrance to that seaport. Like what we have here in Apapa. On the same route, Dangote Refinery is located and that means another interest group of tankers. The problem in Nigeria’s major ports is the challenge of access roads, tank farms, and trucks going to that axis. Again, you see gigantic projects like Dangote Refinery and other huge projects etc in the same environment. Why I am happy with the deep seaport project is that it’s only a foolish country that would Keep making the same mistakes as was done with Apapa and Tin Can ports. But I know with such gigantic projects, honestly, the investors and the government must consider alternative routes for ease of cargo movement.

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