By Anthony Nwachukwu
Overall, the establishment of the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) is to make the port sector more efficient and competitive while enforcing compliance to deter trade infractions, the agency’s Director-General, Dr Pius Akutah, has said.
Akutah, who spoke in Lagos when the President of the Shipping Correspondents Association of Nigeria (SCAN), Mr Moses Ebosele, led a delegation on a courtesy visit to the agency ahead of the association’s summit on indigenous shipping development, which comes up on October 29, vowed to enforce standards to sanitise the sector and achieve the primary goal of port efficiency and growth.
He explained that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council could not do much to punish infractions under its deterrence law because it had insufficient potency.
“In the past, there was no such potency in our law, so we couldn’t enforce anything because the penalties were too insignificant to deter any infraction.
However, “that’s not the case now, as the least penalty in that law is a N500,000 fine for an individual first offender,” and the fine could build up if the offender continues.
“The highest penalty is N20 million for a corporation, and if a corporation continues to commit that infraction, the agency has the power to multiply the penalty as many times as feasible,” he added.
Consequently, the legal enforcement and criminal prosecution provisions for infractions in the NPERA “will serve as deterrence,” he stated.
However, he stressed that “the idea is not to upset the system and make it chaotic or abnormal but rather to create a deterrent regime through the provisions of the law. With the fear of the consequences, they will play by the rules naturally.
“Ours is to set the standards and promote innovations and digitisation of this sector to the point that those standards become very easy for people to maintain. Enforcement, on our own part, is continuing to ensure that these standards are not lowered at any time.”
Responding to questions about the multiple regulatory agencies carrying out physical checks and impeding trade facilitation, the NPERA D-G clarified that the economic regulator is “not stopping any agency from carrying out its mandate, but it has to be done responsibly in a way that it does not affect the clearance processes.”
Nevertheless, he insisted that automating systems and reducing human interference in the processes will make the port system seamless and drive efficiency, as is possible elsewhere in the world where ports are efficient.
“Once these processes are seamless, it will reduce costs on its own. The cost component is very crucial to us,” Akutah insisted.
“If we are building a trillion-dollar economy, it is not only in terms of the amount of money that government will make but also the totality of the GDP of the economy that will promote that one trillion dollars.
“It is not just about what revenue the government is making but also how much business is booming in the country. Within a limited time, we will begin to see the results.
In the meantime, he dismissed the fears of conflict in operations between the NPERA and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), stating that while NPA is concerned with port infrastructure development – whether inland dry port, seaport, or whatever – NPERA is concerned with the economic regulation of those ports.
According to him, all the agencies in the marine economy are working together, supporting each other to actualise the Mr. President’s mandate to diversify the economy, and the promise to give Nigerians a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
