“Human Contact In The Ports Is Very Dangerous” – Shippers’ Council

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) described human contact in Nigerian ports as “dangerous” and “anti-efficiency”.

This description was made by the Executive Secretary of the NSC, Hassan Bello, at a new conference on Friday.

He noted that activities at most ports globally were being digitised and that Nigeria could not be left out of the digitisation process.

Bello said, “Most of the ports in the world are digitized, Nigeria cannot be an exception. We cannot have a multitude of people going into the ports every day, human contact in the ports is very dangerous, it is anti-efficiency and once there is human contact, there will be corruption and then delay.

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“Some people don’t even have any business to go to the port but you see them there, what are they doing?

“We have been working with shipping companies and terminal operators to ensure we make the deadline we set for the first quarter but we saw it was not feasible to attain 90% digitalization.

“What we were able to do on the average was 70%, but digitization of the ports is a process in the making. We want this to happen as quickly as possible.”

Highlighting the problems Nigerian ports faced, he said, “Where we are having problems is on reforms and claims processes which is mostly manual but we have some that scored 50%.

“Also, the second phase is the integration of systems because anybody can be online but there is a need to integrate with the banks for example and even the Nigeria Customs Services.”