By Godfrey Bivbere, Ebuka Oko & Gideon Nnaemezie

In an effort to curb corrupt practices in the maritime sector, globally, major shipping operators have come together under the aegis of Maritime Anti-Corruption Network, MACN, to fight the menace.

Speaking to  Vanguard Maritime Report, Head of Collective Action and Partnership, Maritime Anti-Corruption Network, MACN, Vivik Manon, said that the organization has started engaging with stakeholders and local partners in the various member countries in order to achieve the stipulated objective which is to influence the integrity of those countries.

*Maritime

He stated: “I think before running into solutions we must really understand what the problems are. Sometimes it could be purely perception.

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“We have targeted various countries depending on our members because our members trade in that area very much or they see people trade in those countries.

“So based on the information we get from ships and our engagement with local stakeholders, we can understand what the challenges are.

“Also, we are trying to correct the perception in the understanding of what goes right and what goes wrong from the public sector to the private sector in the countries as opposed to what ship captains or the companies we are interacting with on international level say.

“We want to try and break down these perceptions and based on these we try and make collective actions in those countries.”

On how the international community rates the maritime activities in Nigerian ports, Manon further explained that Nigerian ports are known for delay and difficult to go through due to various public agencies coming on board.

“The previous perception of our members is that when we come to ports in Nigeria, it is very difficult to go through because various public agents are coming on board and it takes a long time. There are different demands being raised depending on who is coming on board.

“There have been various challenges in terms of delaying the vessels and to some extent challenging the vessels as to what they have on board. This is not to say that the vessels are always 100% correct. I myself can tell you that we also make mistakes but there are processes that you can follow very strictly like somebody mentioned about Standard Operating Procedures, SOPs.

“Ships also have SOPs when there are mistakes happening but the illicit demands of making things go away should not be the process and that has been the perception of international companies working or coming to Nigeria saying this is normal life and that is untrue and that is something we want to address.

“The lesser or the bleaker we communicate, nobody would understand what is going on. So our job at MACN    is to work with you here, to understand your point of view and then communicate that effectively to our members and bring them on board in this journey we are on together”, he concluded.