Sanwo-Olu, Agbakoba, Muda, Iheanacho Listed for, Portnews Maiden Summit

BY GBOGBOWA GBOWA

The maiden edition of PORTNEWS SUMMIT will come up on Wednesday, the 4th of December 2024 at Rockview Hotel, Apapa, Lagos. It is organised by PortNews Newspaper.

The theme is Port Reforms and Local Content: Has Nigeria fared Well? The Summit is expected to pool a gathering of respected economists, ship moguls, respected maritime stakeholders, legal experts and longstanding maritime journalists.

Publisher of Port News newspaper, Otunba Wale Oni in a release said that the occasion will be chaired by former Minister of lnterior, Captain Emmanuel lhenacho, while the Guest Speakers will be the renowned economist and a former Director General of Lagos Chambers of Commerce and industries, Dr Muda Yusuf and the well known maritime legal luminary, Olisa Agbakoba, SAN.

The statement said while the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu will be the Chief Host, the Special Guest of Honour is the Honourable Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, His Excellency, Adegboyega Oyetola.

“These stakeholders and experts are expected to critically examine, analyse and find answers and recipes to this all important question and ancillary teething problems”, he said.

Raising serious posers that the summit seeks to address, Oni says genuine answers  given to the the issue based summit will help the industry plan better.

“Since the privatisation of the ports in 2006 by the Federal Government, what have been the fate, the performance indexes of the concessionaires who were entrusted our port terminals and other sensitive facilities with? Have the concessionaires, especially the foreign investors, added values to the system in terms of skills transfer, timeliness, increased ships and cargo volumes? Did the new order translate into more revenues for government and port users in general?

“Do the recent steadily galloping customs revenues tantamount to an upwards swing in ship traffic and a growing Nigerian economy? How do we juxtapose an incipient spectre of forlorn Nigerian freight forwarders and licensed customs agents with diminishing involvement alongside a Customs Service counting trillions of Naira as generated duties? Who remits these humongous sums to Customs? What’s the real worth of these monies? Where are the cargoes?

“These and many posers will be entertained by maritime technocrats, economists and well meaning guests at the Summit with an unflinching goal of improving standards and increasing productivity and profitability in the Nigerian maritime industry”, he sated.