The minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has disclosed his resolve to get presidential approval for the use of scanners at various ports in the country to ease operation.
He explained that the digitalization of port operations would make it competitive with other advanced countries.
The minister also said plans are underway to unveil a road map for the ministry, stating that the policy agenda for the sector was critical to transforming the sector into the best in class regionally and internationally.
Oyetola, stated this as a panel discussant at the 29th session of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), with the main theme: “Pathways to Sustainable Economic Transformation and Inclusion”.
On the importance of the maritime sector, the minister in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, October 24, by the Director of Press and Public Relations of the ministry, Olujimi Oyetomi stated: “We understand the critical role the maritime sector plays in enabling business in an import dependant economy, such as ours, we must move more quickly towards improving the navigability of our waters, engage the draught of our ports, achieve 24 hours cargo clearance, and ensure adequate connectivity of our ports to hinterland efficient road and rail networks.”
Stating some of the challenges, he said;
“The challenges of the maritime sector are well known and documented, slow pace of legislative reforms and weak sector governance to infrastructure deficits, inefficient port management, poor road network, multimodal facilities, the dominance of foreign shipping companies, non-competitiveness of our ports compared to our West African neighbours, port inefficiency and congestion and other malpractices.”
He also said new business models that can develop the sector’s capabilities and ensure the continual dredging of the inland waterways would be introduced.
According to him, all over the world, seaports have gone digital, and digitalization is mainly used to drive efficiency and remove human contacts that are usually very slow and breed corruption.
He added,
“For Nigerian ports to take up their natural position as a maritime hub for countries in West and Central Africa, there must be an enforcement of strict digitalization of all Port operations in the country and an immediate rehabilitation of the Nigerian ports to bring about an upgrade of ports facilities and improvement to make room for our ports to become revolutionised and comparable with others in the advanced maritime nations.”
He added that the ministry was working to streamline the number of government agencies operating at the ports, through the full implementation of the national single window initiative.
