The federal government has restated its resolve to make Nigeria the maritime and oil and gas hub in the West African sub-region.
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mrs. Hadiza
Bala-Usman, who disclosed this Wednesday, during a facility tour of the
Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics (LADOL) base in Apapa pilotage area, said
the move has become necessary considering the potential of the country
as a major maritime player, globally.
The NPA boss made the remark in response
to a call by her host, the Managing Director of LADOL, Dr. Amy Jadesimi
to the government to urgently address the lingering issue in the sector
to ensure a level playing ground for operators, if the dream of making
Nigeria a hub station is to be achieved.
Bala Usman said government was not
unaware of the need to uphold local content drive in the industry as a
veritable means of mass job creation, and in the overall interest of the
nation’s economy.
According to her, “We will look at all
issues as relates to making Nigeria a hub. We will ensure that there is
transparency and accountability in the port’s operations system in a way
that all ports related businesses will strive within the marine
environment.
“We have visited and I must say that I am
particularly impressed at the level of investments here. I am impressed
at your move to boost local content in the industry…we really need to
bring in local content strongly in order to ensure employment for our
people of Nigeria.”
The NPA boss was accompanied by her management team that included the
Executive Director, Marine and Operations, Davies Sekonte, the Executive
Director, Engineering and Technical services, Idris Abubakar, and other
top management staffers.
Earlier, the LADOL boss took the visiting
team on a tour of the yard where the first ever fabrication of a $3.8
billion Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel, otherwise
known as Egina project was taking place within the LADOL base.
She explained further: “This project is the first of its kind in Africa
and sitting it at an indigenous facility like LADOL speaks volumes of
our national resolve and determination to take our pride of place as the
regional hub.”
According to her, the vessel with a
length of 340 meters and 70 meters wide has reached an advanced stage of
completion as the entire project had already gulped no less than $4
billion dollars in which LADOL had put in $500 million in local content.
“We started development in 2004 when we
got the first lease from NPA and our mission and vision has been to see a
situation where Nigeria will join its foreign counterparts such as
Korea, China in creating industrial zones that will take us to the
future.
“We look forward to moving Nigeria
forward along the line of other developed countries of the world where
private indigenous development is the key to economic growth. It makes
sense because Nigeria has a huge market for this, going by the
population, “she said.
To achieve this, Jadesimi appealed to the
ports’ management to not only ensure a level playing ground for all
operators to coexist, but also ensure what she called, “local
collaboration between private sectors and between the private sectors
and public sector”.
She added, “What we are seeing in the
private sector for now ids the ‘zero sum game’ mainly because
historically we have had a situation whereby there is a very small
market and everybody is fighting to have a 100 per cent control of the
small market.
“Local collaboration is what you see in
South Korea whereby one company is supporting 100 other companies
because they all know that to be able to attract the level of business
that will develop the entire country; they all need to work together.”
She noted that LADOL has since keyed into this model hence it embarked
on local fabrication as a way of creating jobs, and adding value to the
economy.
“So the idea behind LADOL is to do what
has been successfully done in China-that is, to create an industrial
free zone that enables us to prove to the world that you can
economically support the largest project in the world such as this Egina
FPSO project in Nigeria. Once you do that, you then have a situation
where people are happy to work here, do business here all at cost saving
operations because it is cheaper to have Nigerians work here than to
hire foreigners.
“Our prayers are that government should continue to support private
investments such as LADOL because no foreigner can love Nigeria more
than Nigerians. We appeal to the MD of NPA to therefore see the need to
bring all the stakeholders-both private and public together in a round
table and together we all key into the master plan of how to make
Nigeria the West African hub,” she stated.
by Eromosele Abiodun/Thisday
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