Indigenous ship owners in Nigeria have said that Nigeria is losing $9.2bn annually to the domination of her freight trade by foreign vessel owners.
Speaking yesterday in Lagos during the 16th Marine and Technical Summit of the Association of Marine Engineers and Surveyors (AMES), Chairman, Starzs Investments Company Ltd., Engr. Greg Ogbeifun, lamented that despite being positioned to be the maritime hub of the Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria’s freight trade is dominated by foreign vessels because of a lack of indigenous capacity.
According to Engineer Ogbeifun, who also doubles as the Chairman of the Benin Port Project Technical Committee, in his paper titled: ‘What is militating against the resurgence of Nigerian global trading?’, said, “Nigeria’s geographical location along the Atlantic Coastline grants her a lot of access to shipping operations, making Nigeria a crucial hub for marine activities.
“The country has a growing demand for shipping services, but the Government has not made it possible for indigenous operators to own ships. The result of this has made Nigeria completely rely heavily on foreign ships to move her goods.
“Conservatively, Nigeria is losing about $9.2bn to foreign vessels dominance of her trade. We are the ones paying that money to the foreign vessel owners. Every Nigerian who imports or exports is paying hugely. It currently generates about 70% of the total cargo between the West and Central African regions”.
He further explained that: “When you look at Apapa Port, Tin-Can Port, Warri Port, Onne Port, and the newly-established Lekki Port; all these ports are relevant in the carriage of Nigerian imports and export trade. It however breaks my heart that every time I look at our ports, all the quays and jetties are filled up with ships, but not one of these ships is owned by any Nigerian.
“The likes of Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho, Chief Isaec Jolapamo, and Temisan Omatseye, who bought ships in the past, the system killed their businesses. With the jobs they were providing and the economic benefits to the nation, everything went down”.
“There are challenges that have made it very impossible for this country, since the demise of the Nigerian National Shipping Line in 1995 to own ships. So, this has a lot to do with the topic of my paper”, he stressed.
