Govt urged to harness opportunities in maritime trade

By Oluwakemi Dauda

Former General Manager, Public Affairs, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Chief Michael Ajayi, has described maritime as the cashcow for growth and wealth creation, urging its stakeholders to collaborate with the government to grow the sector.

In an interview, he emphasised that the sector holds the key to development if its potential can be harnessed adequately.

Ajayi though agreed that there was a need for the Federal Government to address the barriers to exports as part of measures to develop sustainable routes to foreign markets, he averred that the business environment  is no longer tough because government’s policies are more focused on export than imports, a situation he said has been further accentuated by the border closure.

“If we listen to the noise surrounding the border closure, it  shows that our people are  more attracted to imports while the government is trying to put in place the support structures for export. Lack of effective linkage between the stakeholders and government agencies, poor manpower in the non-oil sectors and dearth of information to support youths across the country are the problem confronting the export business,” he explained.

Similarly, a maritime lawyer, Mr Felix Agbaje, disclosed that the sector offers  new business opportunities from clean energy to new modes of transportation, logistics and agriculture, given that it spread across various other sectors.

This, he explained, makes the industry to hold the key to development, if the full potential within the sector are harnessed.

“This explains that we have quite a large financial and capacity gap to fill for Nigerians to be in a position to own most of the vessels ploughing our waters.

‘’Of course, we are all aware of the particular challenges militating against expansion of vessel ownership by Nigerians, the number one hurdle being access to long term finance at a reasonable price. Nonetheless, the opportunities here are considerable and more than sufficient to support the needed investment,” Agbaje said.

He urged the regulators to learn from the Philippines, who, over the years have developed a very robust world class merchant seamen training programme. This he further said, positioned the country to earn huge revenue from deploying hundreds of Pilipino merchant seamen globally.