Illegal demands by public officials in Nigeria from Ship Masters for large unreceipted cash payments in the process of vessel clearance dropped from 266 reported incidents in 2019 to 128 in 2020 and 40 in 2021. All issues reported through the Port Service Support Portal (PSSP) were, from 2020, typically resolved during normal ship operations of the port visit and as at the time of writing, there were only two of such issues yet to be resolved. Behind this major shift in performance is a crop of probably less known civil servants who have been involved in the ports reforms that the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been running since 2012 in collective action with the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network, MACN.
One of such courageous officers and worthy of note is Moses Fadipe of the Nigeria Shippers Council (NSC). He was honoured with the distinction of “Most Outstanding Man of the Year in the Public Sector (Maritime), 2021” by Freight Watch Publications and “Star Boy of 2021” by the NSC. But Moses Fadipe as Head of the Port Standing Task Team (PSTT) which commenced operations on March 3, 2021, in Lagos for the Western Ports and September 28, 2021, in Port Harcourt for Nigeria’s Eastern Ports, did not act alone, he acted in concert with other members of the PSTT drawn from the anti-corruption commission (The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission or ICPC), Department for State Security (DSS) and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).
At various times since 2012 when the collaboration between MACN and the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria began, MACN, through its Nigeria partner, the Convention on Business Integrity (CBi), has given direct feedback to the government over the progress being made or the lack thereof and the Nigerian government has always responded appropriately with new strategies and tactics where such was required to keep reforms on track. An example is ‘Operation Mark’ which came into being in 2019 after MACN complained that the levels of corruption were still unbearable and was the precursor of the Port Standing Task Team (PSTT). Operation Mark carried out sting operations to catch and prosecute officials who wilfully flouted the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) put in place at the ports by each agency and terminal operator located there.
In December 2020, at the World Anti-Corruption Day, the Nigerian Presidency introduced the Nigerian Port Process Manual (NPPM) which depicts the specific steps to be taken to complete each port process, identifies the stakeholders involved and gives an indication of timelines. The PSTT, led by Mr Fadipe, was mandated to monitor and enforce compliance by all government agencies and private stakeholders with the provisions of the NPPM and help remove opaqueness in port operations in line with international best practices as entrenched in the Nigerian Port Process Manual (NPPM). The Port Process Manual is aimed at fostering an enabling environment for domestic and foreign ports users, by eliminating bottlenecks and illegal demands (such as for large unreceipted cash payments).
This approach was taken because Nigeria is seeking an effective, successful, systemic intervention in the port sector which would rapidly change the narrative, the perception and the ranking of Nigeria in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International. The Nigerian Port Process Manual on port operations is also one of the key interventions for the effective implementation of Nigeria’s Executive Order 001, which was directed at promoting transparency and efficiency in the business environment and designed to facilitate the ease of doing business in Nigeria.
Apart from the sharp reduction in the number of demands for large unreceipted cash payments in the process of vessel clearance, the introduction of the SOPs and NPPM has increased the level of transparency around processes to be complied with in Nigeria’s Ports. The introduction of the Port Service Support Portal has also made complaints and grievance handling processes more transparent and effective. Effectiveness is measured in the consistency with which the procedures are upheld and the resultant predictability in cost and time spent on vessel clearance through the ports. Before the launch of the NPPM, it took a vessel an average waiting time of five hours at anchorage after pilot assignment before being birthed. There was a proliferation of various government manning agencies without any specified number of officers boarding a vessel with an average boarding time of not less than 90 minutes by each agency during the vessel clearance exercise. NPPM has rationalized all that now. A recent article summarises the specific achievements of the PSTT in their first 9 months of working on the NPPM to correct some of these ills.
Prior to the launch of the NPPM and the constitution of the PSTT, the maritime sector was bedevilled with challenges of infrastructure to ports administration which created circumstances of excessive delays right from anchorage, vessel reception to import/export processes, excessive ‘red tape,’ human and vehicular congestion in and around the ports, and illegal charges leading to high costs of business operations.
The economic cost of these challenges in the light of the losses that come with the attendant inefficiencies has been estimated at around $7 billion annually. This made the Nigerian Government through the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), the Technical Unit on Government and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR) and The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), in collaboration with the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), embark on a process of reforms to address the challenges in the maritime sector.
According to the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), the SOP’s, NPPM and the PSSP, when fully implemented would have far-reaching implications for operations in Nigerian Ports and Terminals. This is expected to address the estimated annual losses of the sum of N600 billion in customs revenues, $10 billion in non-oil exports and N2.5 trillion in corporate revenues, including the drop of 38-40 per cent in industrial capacity utilization.
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