The Minister of Transport, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi will be leading a team of maritime and transport captains and icons to design a road-map for responsive and accountable leadership in the transport agencies and institutions in the country at the forthcoming Transport Leadership Lecture being organized by Kings Communications Limited, publishers of MMS Plus Newspapers, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Transport.
Billed for Thursday, April 28th, 2016 at the Golden Gate Restaurant, Ikoyi, Lagos, the Minister is the Keynote Speaker, while Prof. David Adamu Baike, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin is the Guest Lecturer, even as the foremost shipbuilder and President of Ship Owners Association of Nigeria(SOAN), Engr. Greg. Ogbeifun is to chair and moderate the event, featuring array of maritime technocrats as panel of discussants. Time: 11: am.
The discussants include: Otunba Kunle Folarin, Chairman, Ports Consultative Forum; Barr. (Mrs.) Margaret Orakwusi, Chairman, Ship Owners’ Forum; Barr. Emeka Akabuogu, chief convener, Oil and Transport Logistics, Africa (OTL) Conference and Exhibition.
The forum will also feature the decoration of the Nigerian Shippers’Council(NSC) as the best Maritime Agency of the Year 2015, an honour conferred on it by an industry-wide poll with 73 percent in its favour, 17 percent could not make a choice, while 10 percent settled for the Nigerian Ports Authority(NPA). The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron had no score in a poll of 105 respondents, conducted by Kings Communications Limited, within duration of six months.
Justifying the need for the Lecture at this time of the industry history, the leader of the organizing team, Mr. Kingsley Anaroke, said, “The maritime industry and the transport sector at large have been under the attack of bad leadership, which has eroded the benefits of transportation to the economy. So, the lecture seeks to address the leadership content of the problems, which is the key to other problems. Simply put, the character or leadership qualities of a leader to a large extent determine the direction of an agency.”
“We are therefore calling on Nigerians and transport sector operators in particular to join the campaign for good leadership in the sector, especially against the prevailing practice of having square pegs on round roles with the concomitant consequences of vision derailment, looting of funds, human and material resources under-utilization, among others.
“This initiative is also in sync with the Change Agendum of the Federal Government, aimed at bringing a new leadership orientation and maximizing the available resources for the greater happiness of the people, a mission Amaechi has hit the grounds running with since made the Minister of Transport, Anaroke added.
The recognition for the NSC as the best maritime agency , is not meant to swell the pool of awards in the country today, rather it is an idea founded on research, whose outcome is the need to creatively create a performance enhancement and reward system that could help bring out the best in the leadership of the transport agencies in Nigeria, especially against the background of the alleged misappropriation of funds by some past leadership of some of the agencies, in addition to clear cases of non-performance and outright abandonment of statutory duties for shadow-chasing.
The outcome of this brain-storming session should be a compass for the government’s future leadership choices in the industry and the expectations of the leaders as well as how the people can hold them accountable by measuring their performances.
