NSC: Many Hurdles to effective Regulation

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council, NSC, is one among federal regulatory Agencies in Nigeria’s maritime industry saddled with regulatory/promotional functions.
For close to four decades that the Council has been in existence, protecting the interests of Nigerian shippers was its cache phrase until recently, when the federal government in a bid to ensure greater effectiveness in a post sea port concession era, reached a decision to make NSC Nigeria’s sea ports economic regulator.
The news was well received by maritime stakeholders who have long decried the absence of such a regulator which gave terminal operators and service providers  liberty to deliver services on terms and conditions they considered profitable not minding the effect on the economy nor end users of cargoes leaving the ports.
The cries and lamentations of importers and port users were loud and piercing. There have been protests and agitations on the need to check the excesses of capitalist invaders and their Nigerian collaborators. However, the helplessness of an Agency like the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, which supervised and midwifed the concessioning exercise, drove importers to patronize neighbouring countries such as Benin, Ghana and others. This places a serious dent on national aspiration to be the West-Africa sub regional trade hub.
Aware of this negative trend, the NSC swung into action to reverse the trend. The resistance it continues to encounter from the combined stranglehold of terminal operators and shipping lines remains a contentious legal tussle between the Council, indeed Nigeria/Nigerians and the Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria STOAN, Association of Shipping Lines Agencies, ASLA.
From 2014 when these associations challenged the powers of the NSC to regulate their services/functions, it has been a herculean time for port users and the Council in deference to judicial authority.
Even as the case has been adjourned to February 2016 it is doubtful if the Council could carry out its regulatory role with the vigour and enthusiasm with which it started.
Views expressed by maritime stakeholders indicate that the Council enjoys the empathy, support and cooperation of Nigerians. From this stem the need for the National Assembly, NASS, to rise to the occasion and clear all hurdles on the path of NSC in carrying out its duties and responsibilities as Economic Port Regulator.
Terminal operators, shipping agencies and port user must be whipped into line. It is time to shape up or jump out of the ports in Nigeria as the tenant cannot lord it over the land owner. All unscrupulous businessmen and women must respect directives of the federal government in order to achieve set economic goals and objectives.
The time to change for good is now. The rest of the world moves on with or without stagnated countries. Shippers will take their cargoes through ports that cost less and from which they could clear their goods faster.
It is a competitive world and citizens, irrespective of their citizenship will do business where and with whom profit is most assured.