The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Mr. Pius Akutah, has said that his first year in office as very challenging and would be a period he would live to remember for the rest of his life. His tenure began with the introduction of a new financial policy by the federal government which stipulated automatic deduction of internally generated revenue (IGR) of all ministries, departments and agencies.
This policy threw spanners in the running and operations of the agency which Mr. Akutah was able to run around effectively without a hitch- hindering operations.
Speaking during an exclusive interview with MMS Plus in his office in Lagos, he said: “It’s a year I will live to remember the rest of my life. It’s been very challenging I must say. I came in on November 1, 2023 and by December of the year there was a new policy of 50 percent automatic deduction of internally generated revenue (IGR) of all agencies and MDAs.
“Just being barely a month on the saddle, that policy hit us very hard. Being an agency that receives handouts from the government, we plan quarterly with whatever allocation that comes to us. We just got allocation for the fourth quarter of the year in December and we started planning with it up to February. Before you know it, in December the policy came and wiped out all the money we had planned with. There was a new account for us that gave us zero balance.”
With this, Akutah said with a staff strength of close to 500, there was no money to pay salaries and so he had to contend with how to manage the situation so that the staff would not go on strike.
“It was very challenging. Thank God we were able to navigate our way through. Nobody went on strike”, adding that the staff were happy because when I came in December, most of what was owed them, the outstanding commitments, was cleared immediately the allocation came.
As a result, the workers trusted him and kept calm until they were able to go through the period. “That was the baptism of fire that I received. We continued and began stakeholders’
engagement. I will say it has been an eventful year. There are a lot of success stories I have recorded and I think I can say it is a successful year,” the executive secretary said.
He said he has recorded some notable milestones within his first year in office. He beat his chest on the completion and commissioning of the inland dry port in Funtua, Katsina State in line with the directive of Mr. President which was handed over to him by the minister of marine and blue economy when he signed his performance bond.
According to Akutah, the Funtua inland dry port was one of the top most things on that performance bond for him to achieve and he was able to do that in the first quarter of the year.
He said he would have been happy to talk about the Nigerian Ports Agency Regulatory Bill if the bill had been passed and assented to but it is still pending at the National Assembly.
The president as Akutah said has his eyes on the sector to grow the economy and the Nigerian Ports Agency Regulatory Bill would have been like icing on the cake for the sector and the country.
“The president is right on the sector because our dependence on the oil and gas sector has made us poorer than we thought we were going to be. Elsewhere people focus more attention on this sector because the sector will grow the economy faster.
“By and large, the oil and gas sector may give us $50 billion a year or thereabout but the maritime sector can give us over $200 billion a year if well managed and harnessed. The structures of the maritime sector support any kind of business in Nigeria, including oil and gas. It is the foundation of any economy. And the president got it right when he decided to focus attention in this part of the economy to grow this country and develop the country with speed.”
Akutah said the president created the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy in a bid to revamp the sector and rebuild the decayed infrastructure there.
