How Nigeria Loses $41bn Daily To Ailing Maritime Sector-SOAN President
Nigerian naira banknotes are seen in this picture illustration, September 10, 2018. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/File Photo
Nigeria is losing daily a huge $41 billion in revenue as a result of poor management of the nation’s maritime sector, the President of the Ship Owners Association of Nigeria (SOAN), Mkgeorge Oyung has revealed.
Oyung made this disclosure Monday in Abuja at the public hearing of a Bill titled: ‘The Nigerian Economic Diversification Bill 2022’.
The SOAN President noted that that Nigeria Port Authority (NPA) was making a total of $2million instead of $43billion as daily revenue.
Explaining importance of shipping across the globe, he said that is the biggest business in the world; hence, Nigeria should pay attention to it.
According to him, Shipping is 90 per cent of global trends and as far as the world is concerned, nothing moves and nothing goes on without shipping and like I mentioned, without shipping, there is no shopping.
“NPA makes $2million a day by their revenue, whereas it is an industry where it is $43bn dollars a day; $1.8billion an hour and $30million a minute.
“NPA is making $2million a day, it means something must give way and my suggestion is that we should relocate Ajegunle,” he said.
The SOAN president expressed worries about the functionality of the ports, saying “all ports are functioning; the constraints of the ports are a matter of congestions due to poor port management of the port.
“I am not trying to indict anybody but the fact that you have to manage the ships that come and make sure that the ships that comes are producing and discharging and you don’t delay them at the port because the ship come to the port, it doesn’t dwell.
“It is supposed to be very controlled, however in our port, especially Apapa port, it is so congested that the roads are not only the problem and of course what need to be done, I have suggested. On other ports, they are bound by infrastructure decay, they are bound by the fact that they are not being utilise.”
The SOAN president advised that the Apapa and Lekki ports, “particularly be a feeder ports where when the goods arrive and it has a two put of 3,000 containers a day, we don’t see the possibility of all of that being able to leave that port. So, we have other ships that will take them to other ports.”
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