Mr. Temisanren Raymond Omatseye, former Director-General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), who holds a first and second degrees in law from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and London School of Economics, both in the United Kingdom, is a seasoned maritime expert. Omatseye who is currently vying for the position of Chairman, Indigenous Ship Owners’ Association of Nigeria (ISAN), the umbrella industry association of vessel owners, in this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf, speaks on his mission and vision for the organisation. Excerpts:
You have signified your interest in running for the Chairman of Indigenous Ship Owners’ Association of Nigeria? Are you well grounded in the issues afflicting the industry?
Sincerely, I must be very frank with you, I have maritime-shipping running in my vein. Everybody has their major and minor. For me, shipping is my major.
Well, I’m sure a lot of indigenous Nigeria ship owners will remember clearly when I first became the DG, one thing I said to them is that I need to prepare a maritime administration that works well so that when I come out as a maritime administrator, things would be very okay because I was on this side of the fence with them before I went to the other side of the fence. I have seen both sides of the fence. I have seen the issues a maritime administrator faces and I have seen what the ship owners are facing. Ship owners are the ones that know what pains they go through but maritime administrators have issues because they don’t appreciate this because many of the guys who are into maritime administration have not been in shipping.
So, when a ship owner tells me this is the issue, I can tell him that, okay yes I know because I can feel what is happening as a ship owner. This is because I have been in the industry to understand what happens as a ship owner and I can also say, well, this is the problem a maritime administrator would have. What we need to do is to see how we can bring the maritime administrator to a position with the ship owners so that the industry can move in sync because what you find out is that most times, a ship owner is suffering and a maritime administrator is shouting. And all of a sudden, they are both fighting themselves and nothing is moving forward.
So, I believe that as a person who has been on each side of the divide of both administration and operations of vessels, I will be able to bring together both institutions and coupled with my international contact and friends, I also would be able to do a few things.
You mentioned the fact that ship owners are assailed with some challenges, could you be more specific?
Ship owners are facing challenges in securing contract of afreightment. I have always said this, that a man who does not have cash flow cannot run a successful business. What is happening is that the businesses that should naturally be given to Nigerians who are capable of doing them, are being given to foreign ship owners who are not domiciling the money in Nigeria but rather taking it away as capital flight. So, that is the major challenge Nigerian ship owners are facing.
Consequently, what now happens is that Nigerian ship owners are not able to pay for some kind of services, such as buying his bunkers.
A Nigerian ship owner would rather buy his bunkers directly from a Nigerian bunkering supplier. But what happens is that the foreign ship owner would rather go to Lome, in Togo, saying, well, I believe the quality of bunkers in Lome are better than what we get in Nigeria. So, that is money we’re losing to outsiders. Whereas a Nigerian ship owner, which I know is the case, would rather buy his bunkers here. Right now, we have to look at how we can discourage this form of capital flight.
If you talk of food, what I have learnt about the Nigerian crew is that they prefer to eat our local food like garri, egusi, ogbono, and stuffs like that, which they buy from the Nigerian market. Whereas when you have a foreign crew, you have to import their beef, chicken, almost everything. Again that is a conduit pipe for our economy. Those are the challenges our ship owners contend with. So what then happens is that because our ship owners don’t have the adequate business contract, they now buy substandard vessels and all of that.
Now, for a maritime administrator, his number one priority is safety. So, he would not give up his primary obligation of making sure the vessel operates safely for a ship owner that is trying to be materialistic because Nigeria is a signatory to international maritime convention. So, that creates a conflict because the maritime administrator needs to do his job. A maritime administrator is talking about safety and due process based on international convention. A Nigerian man would say I can do these things but somebody needs to give me the job to earn the money to be able to meet up these requirements. So, naturally there is going to be a problem. So, the question is between the chicken and the egg, which one comes first?
So, when we come on board, one of our mandates would be to find ways and means of how a maritime administrator can support the ship owners to meet international standards and how we can create the contract for Nigerian ship owners to get enough cash flow to get the kind of internationally acceptable vessels that would make a maritime administrator not come after him.
In the past, a lot of the maritime associations work at cross purposes to the detriment of the business. Do you hope to build a synergy of cooperation among these different groups?
The first thing I would do is to bring all Nigerian ship owners irrespective of the ownership they have whether it’s offshore vessels, fishing trawlers, tankers and what not, under one umbrella. Now, within that one umbrella, we can now operate. All ship owners irrespective of who they are must speak with one voice. There must be a unity of purpose because we are all buying the bunkers from the same place and sourcing our seafarers from the same place. Therefore, we should also be able to draw in the master mariners, the dockworkers, and the chandeliers, to come in and work with us because it’s us shippers that are providing the businesses that drive them to come. So, if I emerge as president of the association, my aim is to bring everybody on board. We must realise that we have a common purpose and our common purpose is to be nationalistic. So, my aim is to bring everybody that is anybody within the shipping industry into one room to achieve our common goal.
What other programmes do you hope to bring on board?
The other programme I’m going to have is also working very closely with other government institutions. This is not a situation where we are going to be a lame duck. We need to let the government hear us. We will impress on the government the benefits of having a very strong ship owners’ association. And one of the things we’re going to do is basically put on the table, to show government the drain pipes on the economy. We’re going to sit down, we’re going to do a study, we’re going to show them figures of the impact on the economy by virtue of the failure of government not utilising Nigerian ship owners. It’s going to be scientific, not sentimental. And we’re not going to fight government. We want to work with government to find solutions to problems as it relates to logistics, subsidies, etc. So many issues are there that we Nigerian ship owners can assist government with. We will show them where the loopholes are, and being Nigerians we will tell them how to block those loopholes to save us capital flight that we’re currently experiencing.
What management style works for you?
My management style is delegation. I like to have people who are smarter than me around me. And basically, I try to act as a leader who shows the way to others and have them deliver to the best of their abilities. I try to give myself enough time to do visioning because a person who is too involved in day to day affairs of running a business will not have enough time to sit down to envision and think of where else to go. That is what you should do as a leader. You’re not supposed to be bugged down by the day to day affairs of the administration of the company, leave that to some else to do. Your job is to drive your team. So, my own style of management is through delegation and giving the people the tool. I believe for every leader who leads a team to make sure he builds followers who can act in his stead when the chips are down.
What that means is that if you leave tomorrow, there won’t be a vacuum in leadership. When you do a lot of delegation, what you are doing is that you build up a pool of people who can step into your shoes the moment you go.
How do you motivate your staff?
Motivation is based on performance. First of all, as a staff you must love your job. That’s one. I believe as a staff, you must like what you are doing, ok? Because if you enjoy your job, you can give up to 110 per cent of your time and commitment to it, whereas a person who is just coming for the sake of collecting salary will only give 50 per cent. So, naturally, because you’re getting your return, it also has to reflect on the man’s pocket too. So, you must be able to pay the guy his worth. For me, there are two ways to it. You must have a basic salary which you must give somebody which should be reasonable enough for the person to pay his bills and all that. You must also give him a target which should stimulate him to get something better based on the achievement of that target. I think there must be a percentage given to that person who is not driven by the fact that he is earning salary but who is driven by the fact that based on my performance, I will get more. So, he now wants to perform optimally so that he can get more in return.
How do you reprimand erring staff?
I don’t tolerate disloyalty from staff. So, when there is disloyalty from a staff, I just fire them. I don’t compromise that at all.
Toughest decision ever made as a CEO?
The toughest decision I ever took is when I was into manufacturing. I was actually involved in rubber manufacturing. We had to go to the forest to extract the latex and later process same into finished products. I interacted mostly with workers at the factory. As a manufacturer, you’re involved in the total supply chain. In doing so, you’re seeing the impact that it has on the rural areas. But at appoint, it became a problem to continue with the business simply because the government failed to invest in making additional rubber and palm plantations. And what happened was that as a result, the demand outstripped supply and the prices went up and what the government was using to subsidise was the Export Grant, which was not adequate after all. Year in year on, I was recording losses but I couldn’t muster the courage to close the factory. In fact, when I eventually closed the factory, I had to keep paying my staff for over nine months full salary because I just couldn’t bring myself to lay off the workers. Imagine having a staff who joined your employ as a corps member, got married and stayed on to work with you for say 10 years. How do you tell such a person he should go, go where? It was a dilemma for me at the time.
