Alhaji Mohammed Bulangu is the Managing Director of Ports and Cargo Handling Services, a subsidiary of SIFAX group. He is also a former General Manager of the Nigerian Ports Authority. In this exclusive interview with MMS Plus, he discusses several pertinent port issues; from the politics in the port concession agreement to the current state of affairs at the port as well as the years prior to the concession.
Excerpts…
Is the Nigerian export sector improving now?
Yes there is some level of improvement. If you compare it with the past, you will observe that it is improving. We are praying that it will keep growing.
What is been exported?
It is mainly agricultural products, processed leather as hides and skin, etc, but it is mostly agricultural products.
How about the cargo throughput?
It is on the downward trend and the reason is the difficulty in assessing foreign exchange. It is not that the government doesn’t want people to import but, because the government wants things to be done rightly. If what we were doing before was wrong, then it is time we do the correct thing. I am sure that very soon everyone will realize that the government has actually done a good thing.
It’s about 10 years since the concession of the ports, cumulatively how much have you invested in operations?
I wouldn’t be able to tell you that, but you know equipments are regularly updated and as for the concession agreement they are to be reviewed after ten years because we cannot provide everything at once. We have invested a lot and in several areas we have exceeded what is required. Our terminal is multi-purpose and we are doing everything we can to attract cargo. Today, the main thing is containerization as a lot of cargoes that used to be loose, are now coming in containers either in wet or dry bulk, that is what makes the multi-purpose terminals to play dual roles.
Do you also handle oil and gas cargo?
What is oil and gas cargo? In all my years in this industry, I have learnt that the oil kind of cargo is a new thing; it is an innovation. There are containers; wet bulk, solid bulk, liquid bulk, etc. The oil and gas cargo can come in as iron rods or cases containing some equipment which can be loose or containerized.
How come there are speculations about certain terminals being specialized for certain types of cargo like oil and gas, was that part of the concession agreement?
There was nothing like that in the concession agreement. In the agreement, a terminal could either be a multi-purpose terminal, a container terminal or a roro terminal.
So, what gave birth to this new era of specialized terminals?
Well, that issue should be left to the relevant authorities to address.
As a General Manager at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) then, you played a role in the concession agreement, so was there any clause that provided for this oil and gas cargo terminal and others?
I don’t want to comment on that for now, but as at the time of drafting the concession agreement there was nothing like that. Probably letters were circulated much later but at the initial stage, there was nothing like that. If you tell someone that his/ her terminal is multi-purpose, you should also explain what type of cargo the person should handle and what type is exempted. Like I said earlier, most of the oil and gas cargo are usually pipes, steroids and cases etc, but they are handled by vessels and we handle some of these things here.
Let’s also discuss the issue of extension of terminal
If you go into the history of the whole process, the delay included certain things which have now being exercised. The extension was made to cover for some areas that were not handled properly at the onset.
Today you are in the private sector, but as someone who was in the public sector when the concession was done, how would you rate the exercise?
Without mincing words, the best thing to have happened to Nigeria’s maritime industry is the concession. It may have its challenges but if you go back to the years before the concession, everyone was complaining that the government wasn’t doing one thing or the NPA was inefficient while some others concluded that the government was bad.
Today, the concession has come but efficiency anywhere is never achieved as zero cost. However, if you look at the investment made by the private sector following the concession, you will observe that it is huge. Over a $100million have been invested by the private sector since the concession, but to find a major contribution of the federal government to any of the nation’s ports, you would have to look as far back as 1982 and that was when they invested in the Warri port, that is minus the Onne port which is a glamorized project. So, looking back at what was obtainable before the concession, you will appreciate the changes in the port industry. If you look at Apapa, the 1.6 kilometre road to the port has changed the environment. That place used to be something else but ENL, APMT, and others have added value to the port. The issue with the sector is that like what is obtainable in other business ventures, it is not always rosy, so we are experiencing the tough times in our industry at the moment, nevertheless we are pushing on but things will go back to normal very soon.
With the reduction in activities at the ports, did you reduce you charges or you left them the way they were?
Our charges depends on so many factors, we operate power generating plants most times, the cost of the diesel, increase in cost of spare parts as a result of the dollar, etc. So we try to maintain what we have while we expect the better days ahead as we intend to make the nation proud. In the past we averaged about 30 vessels in a month but these days it’s between 15- 17 vessels, almost 50% reduction.
