Moses Uwagbale
Mr Hassan Bello, Executive Secretary, Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), has said that the ports in the country have attained 70 per cent digitalisation.
Bello made this known in a media briefing on the first quarter activities of the council.
According to him, the council targeted 90 per cent digitalisation in the first quarter of the year but unfortunately they did not achieve it but still pursuing it in earnest.
“Most of the ports in the world are digitized, Nigeria cannot be an exception. We cannot have multitude of people going into the port everyday, human contact in the port is very dangerous, it is anti-efficiency and ones there is human contact, there will be corruption and then delay.
“Some people don’t even have any business to go to the port but you see them there, what are they doing?
“We have been working with shipping companies and terminal operators to ensure we make the deadline we set for March, first quarter but we saw it is not feasible to attain 90 per cent digitalisation.
“What we were able to do averagely was 70 per cent, but digitisation of the port is a process in the making. We want this to happen as quickly as possible,” he said.
He said that the port was not a place for contact, as one could move millions of tons of cargo with a computer adding that they are happy to announce that the council was on course.
Bello noted that a non-contact port was the solution to so many things such as removing delay which causes demurrage, diversion of a lot of money and solve the problem of corruption and revenue leakages.
He said that ones the port was digitized, it makes the port competitive, urging the country to never forget that it had competitors in West and Central Africa sub-region.
Bello said that it was not an easy to get to the 70 per cent port digitalisation, adding that they had the score cards of every terminal and shipping companies and had been urging them and that was how they made tremendous improvement.
He pointed out that for the shipping companies, Grimaldi had 88 per cent, Ocean Network Express 76 per cent, some others 63 per cent, CMA CGM and there was one with 13 per cent.
He said that those scoring 70 per cent were in 20 before, but they had been working with them to see they improve.
For seaport terminals, Bello said PTML had 92 per cent, even in Port Harcourt, Intels, BUA and Wact having 70, adding that all payments for seaport terminals are digital as before it takes 6-days to make payment now it was 6 seconds.
“ What we are having problems is on reforms and claims processes which is mostly manual but we have some that scored 50 per cent.
“Also, the second phase is the integration of systems because anybody can have online but there is need to integrate with the banks for example and even the Nigeria Customs Services.
The council’s boss said that for digitisation, having a single window was not compulsory as it was better to have a port community system.
He said that digitalisation of the port would also ensure the port environment, was clean, adding that it would tackle all the Illegal things that happen there such as Kiosks setting-up everywhere, people selling engine oil, degrading the whole environment.
“We are going to clear the whole port environment, we are going to work with the Nigerian Ports Authority and the Ports and Offences Act will be cited to clear the place.
“You cannot go and be selling food or diesel at the corridors of the port because some of these trucks stop requesting for them and a five minute stop will cause a lot of problem, so we cannot afford to have such.
“Port is a special place that requires speedy execution of transactions, we cannot have people selling engine oil,” he said.
He said that as a port economic regulator, there was need to lay economic emphasis on what the council does based on infrastructure and processes.
He said that for Nigeria to define its role in the transport sector, which would be very significant, there was need to accommodate bigger ships in our ports and that was the role the lekki Deep Seaport would play.
He pointed out that the ports in Apapa and Tincan Island are really tired looking, difficult to maintain with dredging and with limited draft which could only accommodate smaller ships which would be trans-shipped from neighbours countries.
“And when we say lekki, everyone starts shivering because of its 16meter draft and can carry large vessels bringing in hundred thousands of containers and the economics of scale is cheaper.
“We also have based on Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis, the truck transit parks and the dry ports and so Nigeria shippers council is entrenched in PPP practice and we have seen how Kaduna, Kano is coming up and Ibadan is coming up very soon,” he said.
