Presidential aide laments underdevelopment, woos foreign investors

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Maritime Services, Mr. Olugbenga Oyewole, has called on the International business community to take advantage of investment opportunities in the country.

Mr. Oyewole, who made this call in a presentation sent to the Security, Energy Conservation and Investment Forum 2011 in Dallas, United States of America on Friday, said that there was a huge untapped investment potential in Nigeria.

The SSA, who attributed the economic situation in the country to poor service delivery by past administrations and inadequacy of infrastructure, traced Nigeria’s economic history from the post World War II era to date.

He said, “Obviously, the bane of inadequacy of infrastructures and lack of efficient services delivery are common factors hindering the development of developing countries. Over the years in Nigeria, infrastructural provision has been hampered by limited resources and poor execution of projects by succeeding governments.”

However, considering the high deposit of natural resources in the country, he said that Nigeria was overdue for transformation.

According to him, the plethora of oil wells in Nigeria’s maritime space evidently speak volume of the potential that abound in the country, which prides itself as the most populous black nation in the world.

“The size of Nigeria and its vast natural resources also underscore the great commercial potential therein,” he said.

Chief among the challenges that the country was facing was wastage, Oyewole said and stressed that “for our economy to move forward, we must be ready to plug some of the revenue leakages and we must harness our resources more prudently.

He said, “Government, in realisation of the problem of paucity of funds to meet all its demands over the years, considered Public Private Partnership, which has become one of the most efficient tools of meeting set development targets.

“It is to this end that we have continued to attract international stakeholders to come and explore opportunities that are waiting to be tapped in Nigeria. We also hope that their activities will invariably help in achieving positive turnaround of our economy.”

He stressed particularly that there were immense investment opportunities in the maritime sector in Nigeria.

But the return on investment in the sector had not been encouraging, according to him, this is due to problems such as ineffective administration, bureaucratic bottleneck, infrastructural decay, inadequate handling of equipment, inadequate funding, corruption and negative returns on investment, which he attributed to the agencies overseeing the affairs of the sector.

In his opinion, big and serious minded investors should take the advantage of the lull in the maritime sector in the country by creating wealth for themselves and the nation as well.

For instance, the SSA observed that following the event of militancy, pipeline vandalism and kidnapping, especially in the Niger Delta, Nigerian government required effective policing of the maritime space using modern patrol boats and electronic surveillance technologies.

“To interdict nefarious moves before havocs are wreaked, we want to cover activities in real time and develop intelligence network, we need to protect national assets and infrastructures and interest of legitimate workers within our coast and minimise drains on our economy,” Oyewole added.

To achieve this, he said, there was the need to involve well-focused professionals, who could do the job effectively.

He said, “One of the core values Nigeria lost to the era of military interregnum is capacity building for master mariners. The collapse of our national shipping line has inextricably called off the compulsory sea time for our cadets and ultimately the dearth of master mariners/pilots for our ports operation.

“We desire to train and retrain ratings, cadets and master mariners. We are poised to reinvent our national shipping line.

“Nigerian cargo is currently being carried 100 per cent by foreign ships. But things must begin to change from now. Our own national carrier will come afloat. Investors and financiers are thereby invited to explore the sector as we pursue the goals of developing the sector.”

Again, he lamented what he described as non-availability of storage tankers offshore. At the moment, he said that Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation paid about $300m annually on demurrage for delaying ships bringing imported products for local use. This, he said, could be reduced if storage tankers were built.

He said, “We need investors, who can maintain reasonable storage tankers offshore and provide shuttle vessels to evacuate products to tank farms.”

Other areas of investment opportunities, according to him, are building of river side health care services, maritime environmental pollution control, building of modern railway across the nation’s coastline, ship building, repair and crew training, oil and gas support services, fishing exploration, establishment of maritime bank, discharge of port support services such as power generation, telecommunication, water supply to vessels and supply boats, chanelling, computerisation and equipment leasing.

Source : Punch