Empowering Shippers’ Council to curb impunity of service providers

Last week, CMA-CGM, one of the foreign shipping companies in the country caused a stir in the shipping industry when it announced that as from today, Monday, October 15, 2018, users of its services will be paying additional N144, 000 as congestion surcharge on Nigera-bound cargo.

Their reason was that the cargo glut in the Nigerian Ports, especially Lagos ports, as caused by infrastructural delay, has disrupted and increased the costs of their services.

Expectedly, this decision elicited emotional outrage from importers, customs Brokers and Nigerian Shippers‘ Council as the economic regulator.

While the stakeholders felt aggrieved and rightly so by describing the decision as draconian, inhuman, illegal and null and void with the freight forwarders threatening to boycott the services of the shipping company if it goes ahead to implement the surcharge, the CMA-CGM maintained a deadpan expression.

In a terse response, devoid of emotion, to the grieving service users, the company justified its stance, explaining that the extra cost will be borne by importers at the point of loading, inferring that Customs Agents should not cry more than the bereaved as they are not directly affected.

The nigeriamaritime360.com not only finds the stance and explanation for the illegal charge by the shipping company as distasteful and unjustifiable but is equally unsettled by the bare-faced impunity which the whole action portends.

Of course, we are not totally surprised by this latest affront by the service provider as it has become a pastime for the shipping companies and terminal operators to impose indiscriminate charges and increments on the users of their services.

This impunity is carried out with brazen effrontery and utter disregard for the Nigerian Shippers Council with its role as the economic regulator of the industry.

We have come to discover that these service providers, by their actions and body language, have no iota of regard for the Council and neither do they recognise it as an economic regulator.

They have had cause in the past to challenge the decisions of the Council at the courts and where the courts affirmed the right and status of the council as economic regulator, they have shunned such affirmation with disdain.

A case in point was the affirmation by both the Federal High Court and Court of Appeal which both ruled that the Council has the right to regulate the commercial activities of the service providers when they dragged the council to court.

Despite the court ruling that the Shipping Line Agency Charges (SLAC) collected from Nigerian Shippers from 2006 was illegal and should be refunded, the service providers not only ignored the court directive but continued their act of impunity with heightened intensity.

To say we are bothered by this unmitigated act of disregard for constituted authorities by the service providers are stating the obvious.

It also calls to question the legality or effectiveness of the Executive order of 2015 which confers the status of economic regulator on the Nigerian Shippers Council.

The presidential appointment of the Council as the economic regulator without the force of law, to us, is one big loophole which the service providers are exploiting to disregard the directive of the council and operate with unrestrained impunity.

To us, government laxity and apparent lack of foresight to include a body that will regulate the commercial activities of the port concessionaires during the 2006 port reforms breeds the present impunity of service providers and their disdain for constituted authority.

The presidential affirmation of the Shippers’ Council as the economic regulator, to us, was an after -thought, a stop- gap interim measure to cover up for the glaring fundamental error of not accommodating the role in the port reform agenda, the consequences we are harshly being confronted with today.

We however take solace in the formation of the National Transport Commission (NTC) bill which is meant to address this anomalous situation.

The commission, which will be a multi-sectoral regulatory agency, seeks to entrench and provide efficient economic regulation of the various segment of transportation industry such as maritime, rail, road, aviation and Inland waterways.

It is also gratifying to note that the bill has been passed to law by the two chambers of the National Assembly and presently awaiting the President assent.

We can only urge Mr President not to brood any further delay to sign the bill into law if we are not to continue to subject the hapless users of the services of the terminal operators and shipping companies to further hardship through indiscrimate charges and increments.

We consider it a smart move by the government to have resolved to transmute the shippers’ Council into the Nigeria Transport Commission (NTC) to drive the implementation of the functions of the body.

This move, to us, is laudable as it has effectively staved-off what could have been another round of intense lobbying and competition among other interested maritime agencies, which may lead to the peril of the initiative.

This platform therefore wishes to appeal for quick validation of this process by Mr President in order to put permanent stop to the arrogance and impunity of the service providers who are currently having a ball scoffing at the regulatory functions of the Council.

It is by this legal validation of the economic regulatory role of the Council that will make it cease to be a butt of joke among the service providers who are currently exploiting the presidential garb of the agency as an economic regulator.