There is a popular saying that “when two elephants fight, the grass suffers” this scenario could better explain what has come to be of the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) with the policy of ports concession introduced a few years back after a very serious clash of interest between the government and the Maritime workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), over the policy.

The federal government embarked on privatisation and commercialisation of Nigerian ports, policy in 1991 which eventually disengaged over 8,000 officers and staff of the authority.

Out of this number terminated that year, about half were professionals, trained by the authority in various universities abroad and two-thirds of the remaining number were people who understudied the Hamburg Port Consultant (HPC), according to records.

Port experts from Germany had operated the Nigerian ports effectively, before some greedy Nigerians who envied their position maneuvered to chase them out of operations and quickly occupied their quarters which were given to them for their services as consultants.

When these foreigners were in service as expatriates, both revenue and operations were not disrupted, as operating cost and wastage in term of fraud was almost absent.

From records, operations of the NPA began to dwindle when Nigerians who understudied the expatriates with the view of taking over from them, as well as the majority of the middle-level manpower who were trained in various universities and ports all over the world were disengaged, leaving about one third of the workforce.

As a result of this, much pressure mounted on the remaining workers, and there was serious cargo and ship congestion to the extent that office staff, including typist were deployed to the traffic department, on board ships, at shore quay apron and staking areas of operations.

As unskilled labour then, a lot of things took place among shipping companies, freight forwards and stevedoring companies. A lot of losses were recorded by the NPA, forcing the authority to go into mass employment of graduates, secretaries and other required officers, who were used to fill the gap so created by the rationalising policy.

That apart, today, another policy popularly known as port concessioning has been introduced, without minding the consequences, not only to the maritime sector, but to the economy also. Developed economies that opted for concessioning did put their economic indices intact, but our economy is so loose and almost unregulated.

The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) we thought would improve our economy just led to more debt and borrowing, whereas in other developing economies, the policy improved their economy, and we are living testimonies that the negative effect of SAP is still telling on the Nigerian economy.

Then military head of state made a significant statement that “Nigeria’s problems have defied all economic principles, and are we sure the leakages that pushed SAP to our optimal financial mess will not repeat itself?

Port concessioning chronicled from port privatisation, which means  that most of the area of services in the port will be privately operated under a lease agreement.

The term concessioning agreement means that NPA is restricted to being a regulatory body of the port (landlord) and will no longer offer services, as the role of NPA on the new arrangement could be said to be mere fanciful.

The NPA lack the political will and could not check the concessionaire firms, even the charges they impose on importers for one service or the order. Importers who may be compelled to use the services of these private firms cry over high charges, as the NPA can not dictate how much charges the firms should impose on their client.

Such scenario will also lure the multinational shipping companies to introduce  multiple charges on Nigerian importers and the effect will be transferred to the Nigerian consumers.

Talking about duplicated charges by shipping operators, it was sometime reported that the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) detected about eleven charges imposed by the multinational shipping firm, some of which are not applicable in Nigerian ports.

Such charges include: Shipping companies terminal charges, terminal handling charge; transfer charge; port operations surcharge, commission on turn-over charge, documentation and administrative charge, manifest amendment charge, container deposit, container demurrage and rent/equipment charge. Apart from the above charges, NPA still collect some of their charges from importers.

In the Rivers Ports, especially the Port Harcourt port complex, the activities of some concessionaires create room for one to question the viability of the policy in terms of accelerated development and employment generation.

The Bua ports and Terminal Limited, one of the concessionaires in Port Harcourt wharf had apart from reducing the workforce it inherited which are mostly dock labour workers, it has also up till now failed to rebuild the collapsed quay apron (Berth) in its area of operation.

One could begin to wonder if the terms of concessioning agreement did not cover the aspect of port development and other areas like development of the host communities within which the concessionaires operate.

Rather than pursue programmes that will upgrade the general port condition to make it better than how they met it, some of these concessionaires had  remained adamant to issues of port development and employment generation, and this simply suggest that their focus is only on how they will maximise profit, and whatever the effect, implication with respect to their activities on the environment is not much of concern to them.

On the part of the NPA that has lost substantial number of their professional manpower to the concessioning policy, it has now known that most of those staff lost through retrenchment in concessioning are still needed to run the organisation, particularly for those vital technical and specilalised areas that could not be easily be replaced.

In that regard, the NPA had turn-around to re-engage some of these old staff so as to enable it cope with the work load  and dire demand for adequate manpower to accomplish stated goals.

From all indications. The new  regime of port concessioning has not yeilded the desired objective so envisaged. In the past six years of its implementation. Rather than create employment, it has reduced the workforce, and on the other side, the development of both the port environment and the host communities  have not been properly attended to.

The fact that the NPA is still in need of some of the staff it lost to the concessioning policy, for which it engaged some of them on contract, and the fact that port development so envisaged as well as in employment which had not changed suggest that the concessioning policy though might be good, but the timing and implementation leaves much to be desired.

It is ideal that policy makers take their time to look at the various aspect of the implication, irrespective of the perceived profits.

Corlins Walter