HADIZA USMAN AND THE SEAPORTS
The banning of NAFDAC and SON from the ports is not in the country’s best interest, writes Olisa Ogbuenyi
Recently, the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Ms Hadiza Bala Usman announced that only the NPA, the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the Nigeria Police, the Department of State Security (DSS), the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) and Port Health were the approved agencies to operate at Nigeria’s seaports. By that overriding declaration, she notably excluded two very vital federal agencies, namely the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control [NAFDAC] and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria [SON].
The anxieties and concerns pervading the nation’s landscape since Ms Hadiza’s off-hand pronouncement have been palpable. Understandably, many patriotic Nigerians are disturbed due to the wider consequences of the action of one person on the lives, safety and health of millions of Nigerians.
Up till now, neither Ms Bala Usman nor her subordinates have stepped forward to shed light on the ‘presidential’ directive or approval, if any upon which her statement was predicated. Their silence tends to lend credence to the widespread suspicion that there was no presidential mandate after all to back the sweeping declaration by the NPA helmswoman.
To ask critical federal agencies like NAFDAC and SON to quit the nation’s seaports is simply unimaginable. It has been speculated in some quarters that the NPA Managing Director’s statement was based on the recent Executive Order issued by the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. The speculation raises the question as to whether the intendment of the executive order was actually the banishment of key federal supervisory agencies from the ports. Far from it! The truth is that SON, NAFDAC and other related agencies operating at the ports were key stakeholders not just in the formulation but the implementation of the executive order especially as it relates to actualising ease of business and sanity at the ports. NAFDAC, SON and many other port-related agencies have since perfected the process of keying into provisions of the executive order. All the agencies in the ports implementation committee had since submitted reports on how to harmonise procedures to actualise the ease of doing business [EDB] at the ports and expressed their readiness to comply with the executive order of the federal government.
Indeed, a cursory appraisal of the executive order reveals there was nowhere it ordered NAFDAC or SON to leave the ports. In effect, what the order directed was that all agencies should synergise and harmonise in order to achieve 24-hour cargo clearance at the ports. It is instructive that the implementation committee set up to actualise the objectives of the order has members drawn from key agencies like SON and NAFDAC. It was surprising that one of the agencies, the NPA through its managing director, Ms Hadiza Bala Usman single-handedly went on air to announce the sack of some other agencies from the ports even when the implementation committee was yet to submit its report.
It is evident that Hadiza’s announcement was not part of the executive order but a mere rehash of a non-implementable directive by an erstwhile Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in 2011. Being a new person in the saddle, did Ms Bala Usman seek counsel from those rooted in the system before she read what had been there for long and found unworkable? Could she have been misled by those who scheme to sabotage the well-intentioned executive order that was patriotically handed out by the acting president? Only Hadiza can answer these questions when summoned by the Presidency or the National Assembly.
The implementation of the executive order by federal government’s ministries, departments and agencies [MDAs] should not be misconstrued as an end in itself. It can only be a means to the achievement of a beneficial end for all Nigerians as unarguably intended by the acting president. That fortuitous end result for the nation’s collective good is to ensure EDB at the ports while at the same time checkmating the influx of counterfeited, substandard and dangerous products into the country.
It is possible that even Hadiza did not grasp the full implications of her sweeping statement. This is especially as it relates to the extent unpatriotic Nigerians and their foreign collaborators might go to cash in on the attendant critical supervisory gaps and funnel all manners of fake and harmful products into Nigeria.
Indeed, the absence of SON and NAFDAC officials at the seaports while sundry materials, products and drugs are being shipped into the country via those entry points tantamount to dismantling all the checkpoints along the major roads linking the country to Maiduguri, the hotbed of insurgency in the Northeast in the name of ease of transportation and movement. Such a yo-yo opening will no doubt give way to free movement in the short run, but on the long term, the security and stability of the entire country and even the West African sub-region would have been so fearfully compromised.
Ms Hadiza Bala Usman should be held accountable for the dreadful consequences of her actions. Let nobody experiment with the lives and safety of the people. *Mr. Ogbuenyi sent this piece from Phase 4, Jikwoyi District, Abuja, FCT.