Seaview Properties Limited (SPL), a subsidiary of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is one company that shamefully epitomises the erroneous public sector deficiency in business management which lends credence to the situational assertion, “government has no business in business”. In Nigeria, this sounds logical and reasonable given the death of numerous government business establishments, maliciously mismanaged. Many of those who ‘killed’ the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), Nigeria Airways, National Clearing and Forwarding Agency (NACFA), among others, are doing well in their chosen different private businesses.
This proclivity for bad public business management is not tied to colour of our skin-black as Donald Trump would ascribe the never-do-well syndrome to skin and continents.
It is a Nigerian factor because Kenya still runs Kenya Airways, South African Air still flies, Ethiopian Airways is not doing badly? Do we mention the Emirate or Etihad, found within the United Arab Emirate (UAE) enclave?
So, why can’t government businesses in Nigeria be well managed? This remains a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
This explains the choice for Public Private Partnership (PPP) business model birthed as alternative, yet the Continental Shipyard of NPA is dying with PPP business model. Any reason for this?
However, SPL seems not insulated from this leveling business cancer in Nigeria. Since created as a facility and property management arm of NPA, it has relied so much on the parent body for survival and even payment of workers’ salaries.
This leaves SPL as a metaphorical ever sucking-baby in need of growth.
SPL has had CEOs over the years in the hierarchy of Assistant General Managers (AGMs), who were redeployed from NPA.
Usually they come with the belief that it is a government thing; not business. Some who had business ideas, were removed fast because their ideas were seen as being bigger than the vision of SPL. So this makes SPL driven according to the fleeting whims of an NPA redeployee. No articulated and workable vision as a business enterprise. Members of staff resume work without clear mandate all through the months and years and demand salaries, which are paid from the usual handout from NPA.
Under Engr. Philipson Falade, who retired in 2015, SPL got a fresh breathe with the sponsored purchase and commissioning of some working tools, which were three Hilux vehicles, motor and automatic sweeping machine, water tankers, refuge compactor and dislodger.
The then Managing Director of NPA, Malam Habib Abdullahi charged the management of SPL to use the tools to compete with other dominant players in the nation’s property market, so as to also generate revenue internally for itself.
But SPL refused to grow under Falade who exited the system in a controversial circumstance. Thereafter, SPL could not pay salaries for months, more staff came to work and slept away their potentials, refuse dumps and dirt over ran the entire port environment, with the looming risk of epidemic staring the bare faces of port users, daily.
In a dramatic turn, SPL is dancing to a rhythm of focused business enterprise, but at the risk of saying that the new management is on the verge of deconstructing the government’s business dictum, lets watch and see how the new visionaries will pilot the change activated.
Engr. Musa Wada assumed the position of CEO at the SPL in August, 2016. He was Port Manager in Calabar and Onne Port. With five months on the saddle, SPL has re-invented itself. Random checks within the Apapa, Tincan port show that a new “sheriff” is in town Wada’s coming to SPL coincided with the coming of a new Managing Director of NPA, Ms. Hadiza Bala—Usman, who is the Chairman of SPL board. She has ensured that all the backlog of indebtedness to staff and contractors of SPL were paid.
Now, staff salaries and contractors’ financial obligations are met as at when due.
Wada, we learnt, has re- envisioned SPL to compete for business with their competitors in the facility and properties management market to ensure that SPL generate revenue internally. In this case, a revenue target has been set with the marketing department of SPL fully re-invigorated for business.
Although, not much is expected from the property market yet as a result of the prevailing recession, SPL has focused on its environment management services, industrial scale clearing, fumigation, pest control, landscaping and lawn management, provision of treated water to numerous individuals and corporate clients.
By Kingsley Anaroke
