Chief Chidiogo Okpara.
Story by Dili Utomi.
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The monthly roundtable conference organised by the Congress of Nigerian Maritime Media Practitioners (CONMMEP) held, Monday at the Bene Suites, Surulere Lagos. It was a veritable moment to look into some of the most critical issues that affect businesses within the Maritime sector.
The guest on the day was Chief Chidiogo Okpara, a graduate of the department of Psychology, Imo State University, Owerri.
The roundtable took the usual interactive nature and the first salvo was fired asking Chief Okpara to give his opinion about the performance of the Unified Customs Management System, codenamed B’Odogwu.
The man with over 15 years of experience in freight forwarding said that he personnaly rates B’Odogwu about 70%. He noted that the software application which was introduced almost a year ago is still battling with with teething problems occassioned by down times and several glitches.
He said “These problems have cost freight forwarders so much losses. I have personally lost about 20 million naira on demurrage on storage charges due to the delays that were caused by the use of B’Odogwu, though I know that with time, there will be an improvement in service”.
Chief Okpara advised that next time, new processes should be well tested over a prolonged period of time before the full and final deployment, this he noted is to avoid the kind of trauma that stakeholders have been experiencing.
He spoke about the cost differentials in doing business between Nigeria and other West African countries noting that for example, it costs about ₦6 million more to clear a 40ft container in Nigeria as compared to the neighbouring countries and advised that charges must as a necessity come down to help businesses grow.
Chief Okpara who is the chief executive officer of Chidosky Marine Concept opined that collaboration between the maritime agencies and stakeholders has been rather poor. He made this comment while referencing the introduction of the 4% Free On Board (FOB) charge. He said that the 4% FOB was surreptitiously Introduced into the CEMA Act of 2023 and stated that the stakeholders were not aware of its initial inclusion into the Act.
Chief Okpara commended the Nigerian Shippers’ Council as he noted that from his personal experience, the “Council is doing well enough”. He admonished stakeholders to “7equip themselves with the requisite knowledge on how to approach issues especially as they concern the NSC”.
He was asked about his general assessment of the maritime sector and his response was that “the industry suffers from the problem of inexperience, lack of proper knowledge or understanding of the dynamics within the sector”.
His words “people should be trained and retrained. We are actually growing in terms of human capacity, infrastructure and revenue generation, but the problem is that the cost of doing business is so high and this eventually takes a big toll on the final consumer. There is also the issue of corruption within the sector which is weighing us all down”. He concluded.
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