The federal government has revealed that a road map for the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy will soon be released.
This was said at a panel discussion during the 29th meeting of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), which has as its topic “Pathways to Sustainable Economic Transformation and Inclusion.”
Oyetola said that the summit was timely and that its outcomes will be taken into account as Nigeria develops into an African hub for marine commerce and auxiliary services.
The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy released a statement signed by Olujimi Oyetomi, Director of Press and Public Relations to journalists.
The Minister said:
“Tonight’s session is the latest in our consultation with industry stakeholders in the maritime and the blue economy sector. We understand the critical role the maritime sector plays in enabling business in an import dependent economy such as ours.
“It is imperative that we 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 hinterlands with efficient road and rail networks.
“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.”
The minister stated that it is critical that the ministry, having identified these impediments, works towards improving the navigability of our waters, engaging the draught of our ports, achieving 24-hour cargo clearance, and ensuring adequate connectivity of our ports to hinterlands through efficient road and rail network creation over the next four years.
“We seek to introduce new business models that can ultimately develop our capabilities and ensure the continual dredging of our inland waterways.
“All over the world, seaports have gone digital, and digitalisation is mainly used to drive efficiency and remove human contacts that are usually very slow and breed corruption.
“For Nigerian ports to take up its natural position as a maritime hub for countries in West and Central Africa, there must be an enforcement of strict digitalisation 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.
cc: Daily Post Ng
