Managing Director Nigerian Ports Authority, Alhaji Omar Suleiman, was a member of the Nigerian delegation that visited Spain last week.

Omar Suleiman

The delegation which was led by Transport Minister, Mallam Yusuf Suleiman inspected Ports facilities and studied how rail transportation has helped to contribute to the development at the Ports in Spain. Alhaji Suleiman  spoke with Abayomi Adeshida of our Abuja Bureau after a facility tour of the Port of Barcelona.

The Nigerian public tend to have a negative view of the NPA especially on the issue of corruption. How do you intend to change this perception as NPA MD?

The Nigerian Ports are undergoing transformation and we have the will and concerted effort to save the situation. We now have plans to develop Nigerian Ports to a level that they could be rated among the best in the world with modern infrastructure and you will agree with me that we need to do that now so as to globally compete in the maritime industry.

We have to build a new Port, strategize, open inland container Ports so that we can evacuate goods from the Ports up to the Northern part of the country.

Thereby we can capture markets in Niger Republic, Chad and different parts of Cameroon, because Nigeria is strategically located to be able to render those services through the Ports. And we have learnt a lot here from Barcelona Ports on how they did their expansion and we want to take from them and there is tendency that we will come back here to sit down and discuss with them and perfect moves on how to move the Ports forward in Nigeria.

I cannot comment on the experiences of those who have been in office ahead of me, but one thing I can assure you is that my tenure as the Managing Director of the Ports Authority in Nigeria is a God-given position among many Nigerians who are equally qualified to make the difference. So, I will make sure that I do everything with the fear of God and respect for the office of constituted authorities that appointed me so that I will never indulge in acts that can tarnish the image of President Goodluck Jonathan under whose administration I was given the opportunity to serve my fatherland.

The Barcelona Ports Authority is a successful story of Public Private Partnership in the management of public infrastructures. From your meeting,  what are the specific steps you will  take to improve on the present situation at the Nigerian Ports?

The problem is that the Public Private Partnership arrangement came in as a fresh idea in 2006 and it’s still a learning process. There is still a little more refining that we will need to do so that we get it right; but as of now I will say so far, there is  little success recorded with what we have been able to put in place in Nigeria as against what used to be the case or what the case would have been if we had not taken any steps at all as at the time we made the current arrangement in the Nigerian Ports.

When you compare things now with the way they were before the reforms, you will agree with me that there has been some turn around and things have improved tremendously and all our experience during this travelling will be studied and efforts will be made to further improve on what we had on ground before we came here.

But, we only hope and pray that government will help to look into some bureaucracy  that has been our problem at the Ports so that more investors can be willing to come and easily invest in the Nigerian Ports Authority because what we need now is just being able to handle the red tapism.

Having concluded a meeting with the management and taken a tour of the Port of Barcelona, in what specific areas will today’s experience impact on the activities of the NPA under your management just before the long-term benefits?

We have learnt from this meeting the logistics. Through what we were told, we realize that the Port of Barcelona did not just get to its present stage today. It was built by the determination of all those who had the opportunity to manage the facility to consistently improve upon what the other administrations had done without deviating from the common goal of making sure that the Port maintain its pride of place globally.

You will see they are located in the south and they are developing up North just exactly like what we have in Lagos, Calabar and Port Harcourt. Therefore, we will study their type of logistics system. You heard that they are already serving Ports in several places including Madrid which is 600 kilometers away from here as well as so many in the far Northern areas of Spain. So, we need to look into that to study how they have been able to do that so that we replicate it in Nigeria or even strive to achieve better Ports management than what we have seen here today.

One thing I will want to point out is that there are more long-term benefits of this meeting that we have just had than the short-term gains of coming here. All the same, our coming will tremendously benefit the operations in our Ports as we commence the execution of some of the things we have seen that are been done better than what we were doing in Nigeria.

You will agree with me that reform is a continuous process and the best thing is that we are accepting to move with the best global practices in the Ports business.