A Maritme Consultant, Dr Alex Nwangwu, on Thursday, urged the Federal Government to adopt the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model in addressing the challenges of indigenous shipping development.
Nwangwu said in interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that it would amount to a policy mismatch for government to solely finance the floating of a new shipping line.
“Considering how things have dwindled from when we were in the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, government should not establish a shipping line.
“The national carrier had in its fleet, 30 ships, but all that is gone today, which shows that such business cannot be left as government-owned.
“The best model is government’s partnership with stakeholders in the private sector to develop indigenous shipping and it is on this note that the business can be run profitably,” Nwangwu said.
According to him, many of the vessels operating in Nigeria are foreign-owned and mostly manned by Indians, leaving a lot of trained Nigerians jobless.
“Today, most of the vessels operating in Nigeria are owned by foreigners and manned by Indian nationals, so, the locals have no jobs to do,” he said.
Nwangwu said the cabotage law which was meant to favour Nigerians in the local shipping operations had not been totally favourable as the shipyard assignment of technology transfer had not worked as proposed.
“We have no ships, but our cabotage law says the ships must be indigenously-owned and the objective of the Nigerian shipyard was to transfer technology, but today, very few Nigerians work there
Source: NAN
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