TAAM: Government has no business running Port Operations- Sarumi

The Ibadan High Chief and former Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Adebayo Babatunde Sarumi on Friday identified government’s inability to timely and proactively respond to development in business as a good reason why government should refrain from running businesses, especially the port operations.

The High Chief made the observation in Lagos, while speaking as the Chairman of the Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime (TAAM.3) event, held at the University of Lagos, Akoka Lagos, noting that the tariff that NPA was using in 2004 was what the National Price Income and Productivity Board approved in 1993.

“Government is not the proper person to run port operations. Government is definitely not the proper person to run port operations . This is indeed a business for the private sector; and being a business venture, it has its issues that concerns both the consumers and producers of the services.

“Up till the time I returned to the NPA in 2003, the tariff that NPA was using was the tariff that the Price Income and Productivity approved in 1993.

“So, it is so easy to see that if a tariff of 1993 is still being used in 2004, given the trend in the entire maritime business, there is no way you could do that gainfully. Of course, something suffered” he indicated, noting that what suffered included the quality of services that NPA was giving the stakeholders, particularly, ship turn around, undeepened channels, decayed port infrastructures, even as government continued to subside the NPA services to the private sector.

Chief Sarumi also spoke on the issue of competition, which was not totally given a freehand, as he noted that whereas each terminals should have been given the freedom to seek its fortune unhindered, the NPA was constrained to restrain certain services to certain terminals, especially issues that bothered on clearing of containers.

Consequently, the result was an unfair transfer of NPA monopoly to a private sector monopoly.