Stakeholders fault NPA over zonal port administration dissolution

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STAKEHOLDERS in the Nigerian maritime sector have faulted the recent scrapping of zonal ports administrations by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

The NPA, last week, restructured its administrative system, thereby doing away with the Eastern Zone and Western Zone administrative style, and asked all departments, irrespective of location, to report directly to the corporate headquarters of the agency.

Speaking to Nigerian Tribune  exclusively, a Senior Lecturer at the Federal College of Fisheries and Marine Technology in Lagos, Capt Fola Ojutalayo explained that the new structure will further slow down port administrative processes.

According to Ojutalayo, who is also a member of the Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association, “There is no way the new structure the NPA has opted for will favour the port industry.

“Don’t forget that the headquarters is headed by the Managing Director, who is a political appointee. As we speak, the position of the NPA Managing Director is a political position, so there is no way she will have all the time to attend to all the files that she ought to attend to. And as we all know, shipping business is a time constrained business .

“In shipping business, for any time lost or wasted, somebody must pay for it. The luxury of our usual social-political system of doing things cannot be accommodated in shipping business. Our authorities have to know that the maritime sector is a highly specialised industry.

“There won’t be time for all those bureaucracies that will follow this new NPA system. It may not just work. The reason this new system will not work is because ports processes will become more bureaucratic, as everything will now have to emanate from the NPA headquarters.

“Let’s us give the NPA managing director some months on the new structure, maybe she has some strategy that has been put in place to ensure it works. But generally speaking from antecedents in this nation, the challenges and difficulties of the new NPA structure outweighs the benefit.”

In a separate chat with the President of the Nigerian Ship-owners Association (NISA), Aminu Umar, he added that the new system will surely lead to more bureaucracy in NPA structures.

“As a ship-owner, I understand what it means to avoid delay in shipping business and operations at the ports. I really don’t understand what NPA means by scrapping its zonal structures? Who will oversee the eastern ports? Will everything also have to come from the NPA headquarters in Lagos?” he asked.

Well, I will still have to check from my vessels if anything has changed, but it does not look good to me from a distant viewpoint. Maybe when I check with my vessels and what they go through at the ports when they call there, if nothing has changed, then we can say it is still OK.”

The Board of the NPA recently approved a new organisational structure and the commencement of a Business Process Re-engineering initiative that will create synergies to improve efficiency. It has also approved the redistribution of all General Managers in its employ.

According to a statement signed by NPA’s Principal Manager, Public Affairs, Ibrahim Nasiru, the far reaching initiatives which are aimed at making the NPA a truly professional and performance driven organisation, were approved at a board meeting which held in Lagos on July 27, 2017.

Changes approved by the board include: the reduction in the number of General Managers from 25 to 22; the upgrade of the Hydrography and Dredging Department into a Division status to be headed by a General Manager in recognition of its strategic importance to the Authority;  the upgrade of the Information and Communications Technology Department  into a Division to take more responsibilities from Departments like Utilities; the creation of a new Monitoring and Regulations  Division; the merger of the Capital Projects and Maintenance Divisions into a single Engineering Division to eliminate redundancies; the scrapping of the Special Duties Division; scrapping of the zonal office structure such that departments in the ports will now report directly to the head office.

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