Cabotage Regime Has Failed In Nigeria—Asoluka

Since Cabotage regime took off in Nigeria in 2004, it has failed to meet the expectations and yearnings of indigenous ship owners it meant to serve. As a result of its poor showing, the regime had in recent times received bashing from different experts who raised concerns about the capability of NIMASA, the regulatory and enforcement agency of the policy. Hon. Chris Asoluka, a maritime technocrat bemoaned the performance of the regime. He spoke with FUNSO OLOJO.

What is your assessment of cabotage regime in Nigeria?
The cabotage law was enacted in 2003. In making certain provision for waiver power, one had to realise that the reality would mean that Nigeria wouldn't have all her  capacity and expertise from day one. So, where that gap was noticed, the minister was empowered to use his waiver power to bridge the gap.
This wasn't supposed to be a permanent feature in the cabotage. The cabotage stands on four legs, like an animal just like a dog. It is supposed to run. That is the four elements of cabotage.
You will not play in the coastal waters of Nigeria except you have a vessel that is built in Nigeria, owned by Nigerian, manned by Nigerians and registered in Nigeria.
These are the four elements of cabotage legislation.
In order to afford a gap, it was said that in the event Nigerians do not have any of these, the minister should exercise the waiver power.
But for six years, one would have expected the waiver issued by the minister to begin to decline, meaning that Nigerians would have developed the capacity. But what happens is that because of the inter-agency non-co-operation, the actualisation of cabotage and similar worthy initiatives of this country have been defeated.
One would have expected and one would still expect a presidential order that will harmonise the activities of the agencies in the oil sector because without cargo, a ship is useless.
That is why we say shipping is a derived demand. It's derived because there is need to move a cargo from one point to the other and that creates what we called turnmile which influences the kind of capacity it should be.
There is enormous capacity in term of coastal trade in Nigeria because the off-shore drilling in Nigeria is taking an upper hand against the on-shore drilling.
Such auxiliary services which must integrate with the domestic activities should be encouraged and the only catalyst is by developing the cabotage capacity of Nigeria.
Since the cabotage took off officially in 2004, what is your estimation of its performance?
The performance is not encouraging. The critical elements of successful implementation of the cabotage include inter-agency co-operation, political will in order to implement the policy, the funding aspect. You cannot finance shipping from the ship owners' pockets and that aspect must be tackled because we have what is called CVFF which is the derivative of section 45 of the Cabotage Act which says Cabotage Vessel Financing Funds (CVFF), the utilisation of that funds must be proactive and before you do that, one expects that there should be industry audit in terms of determining the precise capacity of Nigeria and Nigerians.
After that, you do needs assessment in order to determine what the oil industry, what the cabotage trade could require in the next three, five to ten years in order to begin the process of filling these gaps.
What is the level of culpability of NIMASA in the non-performance of cabotage as a regulatory agency?
NIMASA should be a regulatory agency and in a way, the enforcement agency of cabotage. In Nigeria, there is multiplicity of agencies whose areas of duties overlap.
For instance, the local content bill before the National Assembly, some of us have to speak out. I told them that if the bill is passed the way it is, it will further exacerbate the conflict among some key agencies, so there is a need to harmonise in order to explicitly spell out the specific functions of each agency. But in case of overlapping of functions or powers, then a Ministerial directive should be sought in order to compel these agencies to begin to talk to one another.
We want intelligent agency collaboration, an intelligent learning process among our public sector operators.
What then has been the impact of government policies in the development of Maritime Industry in Nigeria?
I am a realist. I do not like apportioning blames. When I say some operators or regulators in their agencies could have certain implementation problems and we say this should not be intractable as a policy student. If you allow these things to develop over time, they become intractable and in order to reduce the level of intractability, the agencies must begin to collaborate and talk to one another.
The political will must exist among the regulatory agencies and they must be vocal to do what the law requires them to do.
Also, some of the dormant provision in our laws should be activated like we have the CVFF.
Also, there has to be a realistic industry audit. We need to know the capacity that is existing. We need to know the kind of capacity that is required in the future which induces the government to do need assessment from the industry demands.
What do you want government to do in a bid to actualise its dream in maritime development?
The policies have to be co-ordinated and integrated. Like now, there is no difference among rail system, aviation system, shipping system. Instead, there is what we called inter-modalism which is a total package. When you provide viable maritime industry, it will now open the Inland waterways and the pressure on our roads, especially for heavy haulage such as containers, crude oil could be done through the Inland waterways. This will lead to free roads that will make them last longer as a result of reduced traffic density and volume.
What we are saying is that transport is the engine of any economy. Any economy that pays lips service to the transportation sector is not ready to develop.
The seven-point agenda of the present government should be power, power, power. Transport, transport, transport. Health, health, health. These issues must be taken to the front burner and agencies should be compelled to talk to one another.
All these tough, fencing frontier mentality of frontier mind-set will not help the actualisation of the presidential dream.
What role would you want the Nigeria Customs to play in this 21st Century rather than its traditional role of tax collection?
The colonial Customs was revenue collector. But the modern customs is the implementer, the enforcer of trade and fiscal policies of state. It is a co-promoter of development in the country because if you have a myopic concept of economic development, you will think that collecting your duties this year and surpassing it next year means you are doing well.
But at times, the apparent high duties you collected last year may stifle the industry or continued revenue collection.
So, a proactive 21st Century Customs should look at total package of facilitating trade and by trade facilitation, you look at the prospects of trade promotion.
By intellectual property development, the shortcut is that why do you bother? Allow Nigeria be like China, let's pirate. Ok, But you are pirating like a second best because there are countries that are superior to you. When you see the abundance of talents in Nigeria, the creativity that is bottled up. Someone suffers to write a book, he has no royalty coming from his sweat, it is because it's pirated. Someone suffers to have a song, before it is done, it is everywhere, it is exported.
You create wealth for pirates, but negatively affects the Nigeria economy.