The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) and the Convention on Business Integrity (CBi) intervention in the last two years in port operations have recorded drastic reduction in corrupt practices in the last two years .
MACN and CBI disclosed on Wednesday in Lagos that with the introduction of Help desk,reports of corrupt demands by government officials from foreign ships captains dropped from 268 complaints in 2019 to 126 for the year 2020.
The Integrity Alliance further revealed that the figure also dropped from 126 disclosed above to 51 as at November 2021 adding that the impact of the help desk has created the assurances and improved perception among foreign ships calling at the nation’s seaports.
Addressing journalists at the inaugural meeting, the Chief Executive Officer, Convention on Business Integrity, Mr. Olusoji Apampa stated that plans are afoot to migrate from the quayside to cargo clearance process section .
The CEO explained that tremendous achievements have been recorded for vessels at berth at the port terminals with less complaints from ship captains, adding that the alliance has commenced the process on addressing issues of cargo clearance.
Apampa stressed that the Integrity Alliance would also complement efforts of Nigerian Ports Process Manual Task Team in achieving its mandate lauding efforts made the the NPPM in the last two years.
He affirmed that “We are not the enforcers, the government is the enforcer and the government has a task team on its side, we just collaborate with that task team to tackle some challenges affecting smooth port operations.
Speaking on capacity building programme, the CBI boss observed that they had a meeting of like minds through the Integrity Alliance to move the maritime sector forward.
On the projection for 2023, he added that the Integrity Alliance would begin training of stakeholders in earnest from the middle of next year adding that they don’t want to clash with political agenda.
He said “Most of what we want to do, we want to achieve in the first half of next year. If it spills over to like quarter three, then we focus on the things that are private sector for the rest of the year that does not require government”, he said.
Apampa noted that the year 2022 would witness a continuation of what they had been able to achieve on the marine side of vessel clearance saying, “2019, as we mentioned, there were 266 incidents of demand for large cash undocumented payments. This dropped drastically to 128 in 2020 and has further dropped to only 51 incidents in 2021.”
“So, it is our hope that in 2022, we can reduce this and that in 2022, we can now start to take bold steps in cargo clearance to try to reduce the incidences of inefficiency and corruption as well in cargo clearing. That you can expect in 2022”, he further said.
He revealed that in the first quarter of 2022, they were expecting to have training of all the agency officials who board vessels and the standing task team which comprises the department of State Services (DSS), the Nigerian Shippers Council, the Independent Corrupt practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) as well as the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) who were carrying out sting operations and ensuring proper implementation of NPPM adding that “we will help strengthen their work by doing so.”
“Still in the first quarter, we want to re-examine the digitization of the ports especially the quest for Single Window in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement. We want to have a major stakeholders’ forum on the 27th of January, 2022.
“Then, moving on, in the second quarter, we want to bring from the sub-region, all of the agencies that board vessels and try to get some training courses for them so that they will understand international best practice on how to relate with ships in the clearing, to relate with also the consignees, freight forwarders in the clearing of cargo, what is their expected behavior and how do we adhere to those standards and so on.
“We are expecting to have that in the second quarter of 2022 and we are hoping Nigeria will showcase it’s very valuable successes because so far, we see that what Nigeria has been able to achieve in the last three years has caught international attention and Egypt, Ukraine, India are now beginning to replicate aspects of what Nigeria is doing.
“So, Nigeria, at least, has something positive to return in the area of building integrity even if we have not managed to fully fight corruption but at least, we are building integrity and it is catching attention”, he stated.
Explaining the mode of operation of the Integrity Alliance, Mr. Apampa said, “It is not us versus government, as you can see, it is us and government and the users jointly. So, this is a collective action, we believe government on its own cannot solve this problem, the users on their own cannot solve this problem, so, except we have a common forum that we use, so then, if government representatives here take a report back, it is taken seriously because they know it is not adversarial, them versus us. This is something carefully considered which if we look at it, we make progress for the whole nation and it is seen in a different light to just having a report. So, that is the strategy that this movement is using.
“There has to be mutual target setting. Now that you have understanding from the public sector and understanding from the private sector, the two has to sit together annually so that Integrity Alliance will now be meeting regularly with the government side to say, what is the target? We have brought it down to 51 incidents and now we want to do cargo, what is the target? We will mutually agree so that we will mutually discuss challenges and mutually come up with solution because as you can see, we are on the same side that is both government and private sector.
“Then, we now bring in the civil society in the form of Seafarers Welfare Board. We also are desirous of bringing in the Nigerian Merchant Navy and the Union side of it also, that they should hold both sides accountable. If the users are saying this, government is saying this, they are both promising to improve it, then, the people who are directly affected should also be saying, that thing you promised, fulfill it.”
He went on to inform that in order to make it easier for port users to carry on their business, they had created some tools kits to assist them. According to him, “If you go on Google Play Store or the Apple Store, you will find SOP Tool kits, download it, any SOP you want to find, it is there. It will quickly give you the summary of those things you can find very quickly. If you are an importer or an exporter, what are the requirements? You will find it very quickly through that tool kits.
“Then, as we have help desk on the side of the vessel clearance. So, if you are sailing into our port, you can get help real time whether by voice, text, WhatsApp or email.
“You can ask for help and in real time, Shippers’ Council is picking up that communication and they are acting on it. For example, officials of Port Health refused to give you free pratique because there’s something else in it, already, the Captain escalates it, it is received in real time, Shippers’ Council receives it, they move into action, all of the agencies at the port get to hear of it, it is escalated to the top of Health Department very quickly and somebody makes a pronouncement. So, we are trying to use that to slow down the ability and then, you still have the standing task team that can still come and apprehend you. We now want to see how that can be repeated at the cargo side as well.
“So, all of those mechanisms are also there and on the cargo side, we have something called User Experience Diary. If you go on the Apple Store or the Google Play Store, you will see Portcallassist, you can just download that software and just record what is happening. Just answer a few questions as you are clearing your cargo. If you come up that somebody is demanding a bribe from you, you can escalate it. By escalating it, it triggers immediately to the real people in the background, the same thing happening at the cargo side will be escalated to the Shippers’ Council and so on and you get this intervention.
“That is how we are helping the Port Process Manual that where there are these breaches, to mobilize and recruit people to give them feedback so that they know where the problem is in order to be able to resolve it”, he submitted.
However, to reduce crime, if every company in Nigeria requires the Police to reduce crime, then, you will not get anywhere. The Police should do their work, so, let the standing task team do its work but we now need each agency to set up its own compliance function so it can tell its own members what is the standard it expects of them and police its own members to make sure they are doing the right thing. Then, the work of the task team will become more effective.”
Demola Bakare, representative of ICPC on MACN/CBI Steering Committee reiterated the anti graft commitment to reduce all forms of corruption from the seaports.
Bakare maintained that with the progress recorded so far at the quayside, the Alliance will move to the cargo clearance section to weed out bad eggs from the sub sector.
On his part representative from the Federal Ministry of Transportation, Solomon D. Zaks said government is working round the clock to ensure that the ports record some level of progress against corrupt tendency.
By Roland Ekama
Caption:
From Left: Bosede Oguntuberu, Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR); Solomon D. Zaks, representative of Federal Ministry of Transportation; Vivek Menon, Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN); Engr. Dr. Innocent Akuvue, MACN Integrity Alliance and President General, National Shippers Association of Nigeria (NASAN); Demola Bakare, representative of ICPC on MACN/CBI Steering Committee and Olusoji Apampa, CEO, Convention on Business Integrity during the strategy meeting for 2022 in Lagos on Wednesday.
